By Kaye Fallick
Editor www.aboutseniors.com.au
A lot of tosh is written
about retirement planning. And significant numbers of Australians are resisting
the urge to start. Why? Read on to find out who has hijacked the retirement
discussion, and why you should plan NOT to retire so you can have the longest,
healthiest and most enjoyable life.
In the old days things were
much easier: we were born, we lived, we died in a seemingly linear progression.
Education, work and retirement followed one after the other. Before we turned
21 we were educated, then we entered the workforce or stayed home raising children
and, after this, at about 60 or 65, we took the golden handshake and went home
to don our slippers.
More recently, the concept of the latter portion of our lives being a time dedicated
to kicking back, smelling the roses and endless leisure has had to change to
incorporate the dynamism of the other aspects of our life.
One of the most exciting changes has been in education. The availability of
life-long and long-distance or off-campus learning means there is literally
nothing you cannot learn if you possess the will, the application and access
to the internet – or an old-fashioned bricks-and-mortar learning institute.
And radical changes to the workplace continue to occur. Work has left the office,
the factory and the field and is now conducted in planes, cafés, spare
bedrooms and public parks as mobile communication systems allow us to roam far
and wide while doing our day jobs. Work is also less about a singularly focused
career path within one industry, and more a patchwork quilt of ‘time in,
time out’, and time somewhere in-between.
Who’s talking
now?
There appears to be a determination to hijack the retirement discussion by three
major forces with very different agendas. This is, at least, stunting useful
debate, and, at worst, seriously damaging the later life ambitions for a majority
of Australians by confusing them and misrepresenting the retirement landscape.
The first of these forces
is government – at both state and federal levels. Government is supposed
to read statistics and plan for major societal changes – right? Well,
between 1946 and 1966 there was a bulge in the birth rates. This is now referred
to as the baby boom. This demographic bulge has influenced expenditure in many
ways over the years, starting with increased need for schools and teachers in
the 50s and 60s, to ‘youth culture’ advertising in the 70s, to the
need for increased optical aids in the 90s. And as these five-million-plus Australians
transition from full-time work they will obviously have a huge impact on the
national bank balance. But when did the Federal Government really start to notice
this bulge? Sadly, it took until 2002 for the first Intergenerational Report
from the Productivity Commission.
Since then there has been
a flurry of activity and ad hoc legislation which has only really produced bandaid
solutions for those workers entering their sixth decade. These kneejerk reactions
to the need to assist workers with insufficient retirement savings have also
resulted in massive confusion in the marketplace when it comes to what you can
and cannot do with your superannuation. Increasingly complex rules have further
exacerbated the retirement planning turnoff – and although the current
federal government has attemptedd to streamline some superannuation rules, the
subject of super remains totally bewildering for most ordinary Australians.
In 2004 the Financial Literacy
Taskforce was created to help Australians take control of their financial future.
And did this taskforce note the emergence of a new underclass – mature
aged men and women with chronically low superannuation or none at all? No, the
first initiative was to address the savings of school children – those
with the MOST time to get their act together, not the least.
Government was also the
sector most likely to ‘downsize’ mature workers in the 1990s as
the chill winds of economic rationalisation blew through the corridors of the
public service – witness the wholesale exodus from the ranks of the Victorian
public service. Jeff Kennett is now doing an excellent job of heading up the
depression initiative, beyondblue, but one can’t help but wonder if he
didn’t cause more than a modicum of angst when, as Premier, he was king
of the workforce cuts?
Another force at play in the retirement planning arena is the financial services
sector – those large companies who are keen to manage your money. A large
majority of Australians continue to disappoint these companies by not coming
to the table, literally, to commence formal retirement planning discussions.
And many millions of dollars continue to be spent by these same companies keen
to gather research as to why consumers won’t front. The answer is obvious.
For the past two decades their communication to pre-retirees has had two key
image problems.
Firstly, the advertising
is stuck in the rut of cosy, middle class coupledom – increasingly irrelevant
or offensive to the growing number of singles. These ads continue to use images
of middle class couples frolicking on sunlit beaches, playing their lives away
like geriatric toddlers without a brain in their heads. Little wonder, then,
that Australians have turned off. Some 70–80 per cent of the population
will require at least a part Centrelink benefit to fund their later years –
so images and copy directed at the 10–20 per cent of relatively high net
worth individuals is simply irrelevant to the vast majority. And the concept
of ‘playing’ is even less relevant – as recent HSBC research
shows, those lucky enough to be able to afford at least a ‘part’
retirement are keen to continue to connect with society in as many meaningful
ways as possible – be it through volunteering, mentoring, coaching, a
new business, a new relationship, a second family…
The third of the ‘hijacking’
forces is well-meaning but generally inaccurate trend spotters and ‘generational’
doomsayers. Consider a recent statement such as this from headline honcho, demographer
Bernard Salt:
“Higher life expectancies have allowed baby boomers to redefine life between
55 and 75… and reduce their working hours slowly (to) a portfolio lifestyle…
where you might have commercial interests two days a week, then on the other
days you might divide it between mentoring, charity work, something physical
like a round of golf with your friends and investing in your relationship with
your partner.”1
Salt is guilty of too many
middle class generalisations about what baby boomers might and might not do.
He has been stating for years that baby boomers “get exactly what they
want”2, which is blatantly untrue when applied to millions barely surviving
on low wages, facing rising petrol costs and increasing interest rates. His
notion of the ageing population seems to be centred on the North Shore of Sydney
and leafy green inner suburban Melbourne. His suggested “portfolio lifestyle”
of “commercial interests, charity work, golf and investing in a partner
relationship” is a totally ridiculous notion for most working Australians.
What commercial interests? Try asking the 57 per cent of women who are staring
down the barrel of retiring on superannuation savings of less than $50003. These
middle class presumptions are really unhelpful when we should be urgently addressing
not the range, but the lack of retirement choices for many Australians who can
barely afford a putter, let alone golf club fees.
And the predictions by commentators such as Salt, Ryan Heath and Peter Sheahan
of intergenerational warfare between Generation X and Y and ‘ageing’
boomers are just further pap to inflate headlines and boost sagging newspaper
circulation figures. Whether called the frugals, boomers, Gen X, Y, Z or millennials,
reports of intergenerational battles between parents and children are gross
generalisations about people whose only commonality is their birth year. If
we could just leave the middle class myopia behind and get over the self-indulgent
sea change fairytales long enough to check out some real statistics, we might
understand the very real struggle many ordinary Australians are facing –
as well as allow ourselves to celebrate the many new ways working can be embraced
by those in their 60s, 70s, 80s and beyond.
1. Quoted in The Australian,
18 August 2006, ‘Retiring is for wimps’
2. Quoted in Sydney Morning Herald.
3. Quoted in Financial Planning, ‘Men are from Mars: women and retirement’,
July 2005.
Not past it, by a long shot
The fact is, in today’s tight labour market, your skills are not just
needed – they are valued. And for those not ready, willing or able to retire,
there’s a viable option in the form of a new online skills marketplace.
Peter Landis, co-founder
of the Re Generation website, has created a business model which he believes
will allow mature Australians to ‘unbundle’ their skills in order
to connect with those employers who will be happy to pay to use them.
“Our goal is to establish a national skills pool. The deep end of the
pool is populated by older Australians with their high levels of acquired skills.
Re Generation offers an online skills market, developed over two years by an
independent Australian company with the assistance of an AusIndustry grant.
Members can disclose as little or as much as they desire – just a first
name and a skill are sufficient to get started.
Membership is $45 per annum (*** although Your Life readers are encouraged to
visit www.aboutseniors.com.au
and click on the Re Generation banner – before 31 December 2006 –
to received a 50 per cent discount across a two-year period). So for six cents
a day you will be able to register your skills at www.theregeneration.com.au
for a prospective employer to find you.
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