Health |

‘Retirement age’ prompts fears of dying too soon, living too long

Wesley Kotys expected a solid answer to his simple question. I didn’t have one, and I wondered how many others might feel the same way.

“What age do you plan to retire?” asked Kotys, a professional wealth adviser in Valparaiso.

I’ve never really explored that question, with any seriousness anyway. Retirement has always been a distant thought, like someday getting a colonoscopy or vacationing overseas.

To be completely candid, I’ve never been convinced that I’d live to 65, 68 or whatever. Retirement, to me, has been more of a rumor than a reliable plan of any kind.

Plus, I agree with the adage, “We make plans and God laughs.”

Not for its literal meaning, but for its eternal truth. Plans worry me. Long-term plans especially. How presumptuous, I feel. Even when I make plans in the near future – for, say, a public presentation a few months from now – I feel it goes into some murky future that may never get here.

It always has, and I’ve always been here to greet that date, so far.

Nevertheless, will I be here in 2027, when I turn 65? God is surely chuckling. I chuckle at the absurdity of my thoughts on aging, mortality and planning for retirement.

Not Kotys, who was punching my replies into a software program to help me plan for my old age. Will I retire early, in my late 50s? Later than the norm, in my late 60s? Will I ever truly retire, considering I write for a living, as opposed to, say, high-rise construction work?

I didn’t know how to reply to Kotys’ questions about my make-believe future. All these existential thoughts crossed my mind in the flash of a minute. So I spit out what sounded most plausible.

With all the confidence of a question mark, I replied, “In my late 60s?”

He punched in my responses, along with my current financial figures, assets, liabilities and so on. His professional advice: Save more money. And squirrel away more money, starting now, for my retirement, regardless when it kicks in or I’m forced into it.

Many people are forced to retire due to poor health but, according to new study by Oregon State University researchers, working later in life may lower the risk of death from any cause. Yes, regardless of health status, those individuals in the study who retired at least one year after age 65 had a lower risk of death, researchers determined.

“It may not apply to everybody, but we think work brings people a lot of economic and social benefits that could impact the length of their lives,” said Chenkai Wu, lead author of the study, in a statement. “Most research in this area has focused on the economic impacts of delaying retirement. I thought it might be good to look at the health impacts.”

Hopefully this will bode well for me because I’m banking more on my health than my wealth. It’s not that I’m so healthy at 54. It’s that I don’t have any wealth to speak of, let alone to plan or fund my retirement.

Up until now, my health has been my wealth.

I can only hope that my investments of regular physical activity and relatively healthy lifestyle choices will pay future dividends. There are no guarantees, I know this. But there are also no guarantees of me retiring to enough wealth to sustain me past 65, 68 or older.

The way I see it, it’s a conundrum of either dying too soon or living too long.

Only the lonely

My recent column on loneliness, and a Hobart man who escaped it, attracted a lot of reader feedback but none more poignant than this email from Patricia Mounts.

“I am a very young 71, though most say I look in my 50s,” the Chesterton woman wrote. “I am young at heart but I am lonely and frustrated, like the man in your article. This is a lonely world for people who have spent their whole life with someone, only to be left by death or divorce. You have no idea how hard this is to cope with.”

Mounts said she was encouraged by that column, which had a happy ending, complete with finding new love and getting married again.

“I have tried dating websites but they are awful. So many scammers and bad people, men and woman both. It is hard to trust them,” she wrote. Your article gave me hope that I might still find some kind of happiness in life.”

A trickle of hope can go a long way against a tsunami of unfulfilling relationships.

A.B. is not dead

I don’t think I will ever begin a column with someone’s obituary, especially if the person is still alive.

This is what I did with my recent column on Alan “A.B.” Berman, who penned his own obit to help his family when that time comes. The 90-year-old retired scientist from Valparaiso did such a fine job that I couldn’t resist using part of it in my column.

“Born in Brooklyn, NY, he entered college at the age of 16…” Berman’s obit begins.

“At his request, no services will be held,” his obit concludes.

This is how I also began and ended my column, which I thought was quite clever.

So clever that many readers thought Berman had died, and contacted me to say so. Worse yet, some of Berman’s own friends and family thought he had died, until they were told otherwise.

“A.B. is alive and well,” his son, Jim Berman, wrote to friends across the country who were sending him condolences. “Unfortunately, I have received at least 20 to 30 calls and emails from people sending condolences.”

“Yesterday, a retired research physicist from the U.S. National Research Laboratory found me and asked when his obituary was going to be published in the Washington Post,” his son told me.

On the upside, I’m told that A.B. got a real kick out of the misunderstanding.

jdavich@post-trib.com

Twitter @jdavich