Jeff Goldsmith
Author, THE LONG BABY BOOM: An Optimistic Vision for a Graying Generation

The chorus of doomsayers wailing about the impending “retirement” of the aging baby boom is almost deafening- legions of boomers quitting work, moving to Florida, playing MahJongg, and listening to their old Jimmy Buffet records, swamping our fraying safety net with Social Security and Medicare costs.

What’s the problem with this scenario? Simply, no-one seems actually to have spoken to a boomer about it. The vast majority of us have no intention of retiring as our parents did. Our parents were bored silly in retirement; according to gerontologist Ken Dychtwald, today’s retirees watch 43 hrs of television a week, and half wish they were still working. Their health and mood both deteriorated sharply when they stopped working.

Learning from our parents’ experiences, more than 80% of baby boomers plan on working past age 65. While some boomers who haven’t saved enough to retire would suffer a massive drop in their living standards if they didn’t work, for most of us, it is simply that we don’t know how to not work. Keep reading