Was retirement what you expected?

The Global Atlantic retirement study completed last year had some interesting findings. 

Our Findings

Nearly two in five U.S. retirees are spending more then they expected and just under one-half of pre-retired consumers believe planning for retirement is more difficult for them than it was for their parents.

We also examined retirement spending among those with additional sources of income. We found that retirees collecting income from pensions or annuities are able to sustain significantly more expenses than those who do not.

The risk of running out of money is real and the want for an enjoyable retirement is also real. The findings show that the need is growing for Americans not just to accumulate enough money for retirement. but to have a guaranteed income stream throughout retirement- regardless of how long retirement lasts.

Retirees are cutting back on discretionary expenses

While the typical non-retired U.S. consumer over the age of 40 spends $2,993 a month, on average, the typical retiree spends 32% less ($2,008). Most common areas where retirees are spending less than pre-retirees include discretionary expenses such as:

Planning Regrets

The fact that retirees spend less than non-retirees may not be by choice, as more than half (55%) of retirees have retirement planning regrets. Top 3 Regrets

•  36% Did not save enough

•  20% Relied too much on social security

•  12% Did not pay down debt prior to retirement.

Methodology

The Global Atlantic retirement study was completed online among a random sample of the general U.S. population aged 40 and older. A total of 4,223 consumers participated, equally representing retirees and individuals not retired. The margin of error when reporting on the total sample of retirees and individuals not retired is +/- 2.1 percent at the 95 percent confidence level.

What makes people happy in retirement?

That's the question many of us have been thinking and writing about for years with all of us having different answers and reasons for those answers. What makes people happy is a better question to ask.

The science of happiness tells us that people who are happy share the following:

·      Strong Relationships. A major study followed hundreds of men for more than 70 years and found the happiest (and healthiest) were those who had strong relationships with people they trusted to support them.

·      A number of studies have shown that happier people prefer to have more time in their lives than more money.

·      But we need enough money to pay the bills. People's well-being rises along with income levels.

·      People who are happy take the time to stop to smell the roses. People who slow down to reflect on good things in their lives report being happier.

·      People who are happy perform acts of kindness, which boost their mood. Give your friends a ride to the airport or spend an afternoon volunteering

·      People who are happy stay active. Studies show that increased levels of physical activity are connected to higher levels of happiness.

·      People tend to be happier if they spend their money on experiences instead of things. Researchers have also found that buying things that allow you to have experiences, like rock climbing shoes or a new book to read can also, increase happiness.

·      Several studies have found that people who practice mindfulness meditation experience greater well-being.

·      Interactions with casual friends can make people happier, and close friendships — especially with happy people — can have a powerful effect on your own happiness as well

These things are not going to change when we retire unless you assume that older people are different than younger people. We are not. What will help us stay happy in retirement are those things that helped us stay happy when we were young. These items can be summarized as money, health, time and relationships.

So, as you plan for your retirement and look at all the opportunities for investments, take the time to invest in your own health, your friendships and your intimate relationships.  

The other predictors of happiness in retirement your health and friendships and the depth of friendships and the number of friendships that you have with other people. It takes ongoing investment and time and resources to be able to maintain those friendships so you still have close friends when you retire.

  

The problem is, men, and I am speaking for myself, are bad at maintaining friendships over time. Keeping friends is hard work and requires cultivation, time and energy. A man's social circle is at work. By the time they retire, they're relying more on their spouse for friendship and in an opposite-sex couple, they're relying on their spouse to spend time with them, to go on vacation with them and have lunch with them, and sometimes that creates a bit of friction in retirement.

Women, by contrast, invest more. Women have more deep relationships than men do by the time they get to retirement, and their circle of friends is not tied to employment, and they want to keep those relationships alive and so they may resent the time spent with their spouse who is trying to build new relationships. Interestingly, the research tells us that the happiest group of retirees are women who are newly divorced between the ages of 60 and 65.

The idealism of youth is still active in seniors

It is amazing when the young find that the old still have deep yearnings and ambitions and some of us are still filled with the energy and idealism of youth. The recent stories of the grandfather who had climbed up a tree to stop a pipeline recently springs to mind. The press played the story about the age of the person, not the idealism which shaped his decision to act.  Youth may believe that we become more stoic and sage-like over time, which may be true for some, but most of us still have hopes, dreams and desire.

My generation is not becoming slowly disillusioned by life, we are holding on to our sense of the wonder of life and we hold on to the vibrancy and vitality we had when we were young. We all have joys, hopes, fears, and longings that never go away no matter how old we get.

I have been fortunate as I see a lot of seniors when I am giving the workshops on Health and Wellness. Some of them assume I am an expert or an authority (which I am not) and they talk to me about life. Sometimes they talk about regrets, sometimes they talk about love, sometimes they talk about success. Most of the thoughts about regrets revolved around families. The main regret appears to be that the relationships, either with their children or between their children, turned out differently than they hoped.

When people talk to me about happiness and successes they talk about times when they were young and raising their families when their children were younger and living at home. I remember these times as very stressful, but they, of course, have no doubt that those days were also the happiest.

Happiness is more complex than we thought when we were younger. Our understanding of what makes us happy changes as we age. When we’re younger, perhaps we imagine happiness as a feeling instead of a state of fulfillment, meaning, or abundance.

Being old brought a lot of advantages: more time, more perspective, less hustling to be the best and most successful, and an urgency to strengthen the important relationships in your life. Many of my friends and the people I talk to, talk about death, but none of us are afraid of death but we are afraid of dying and when we are dying becoming a burden on the ones we love.

I know young people and some older people who have an intense fear of growing old. They assume that as we get older, we lose our vibrancy and thirst for life. In my experience talking with my friends and through my interactions with the few thousand people I meet through the lectures I give; this couldn’t be further from the truth. The people I know and meet, still laugh like crazy, fall in love like mad and pursue happiness fiercely. Put simply, one person I talked to asked me, “Do you wish you accomplished more?” Before I could respond he answered his own question by stating sadly, “No, I wished I loved more.”

Do you live near a park?

As I walked back to my car, after setting up the workshop I passed a lady and she said, “Good Morning”, I replied, “Good Morning and how are you doing?” She looked at me and frowned and just said: “I’m alive”. I deposited some material in the car and went back to the center where I was giving a workshop on “Common skin conditions for seniors”.  When I walked into the room, the woman I had passed was sitting in the front row. She looked at me and said, “You are giving the workshop?” I said, “Yes, and I am glad you are alive to be here for it.” She laughed and the other 14 people at my workshop looked at her and then I left the room for a second, but when I came back she and other people in the workshop were laughing.

As I was leaving, after the workshop, I took a look around the center. There was a dozen or so people in the Billiard room, the small cafeteria was almost full, I could hear, but could not see the people in the auditorium exercising, the card room was buzzing and the lawn bowling courts (all 4) were full of teams enjoying the nice weather. There was also a number of people just watching. I was struck by the energy in the center and the good feeling of the group. Loneliness is a problem for many seniors, but it did not appear to be a problem for the people I saw this morning.

CARP,  is one of Canada’s largest advocacy group for older Canadians, it surveyed its members in 2017 to find out about their social environment, contact with people, age, health, access to public services, and family situations and analyzed the correlation between these factors with feelings of loneliness and isolation.

Here are some of the findings:

•        People who were married were far less likely to be lonely and were far less socially isolated than those who were not married.

•        Access to public services reducing loneliness far more then the effects of having children or grandchildren.

•        Those who rated the transit they had access to as ‘high-quality’ were far less lonely; this effect was about half the size of the effect of being married.

The members said that living near parks, community (senior) centers, libraries and high-quality transit helped their quality of life and helped combat loneliness.

Loneliness Affects People’s Health More than Age

The survey found that people who are lonelier or have less social contact are also likely to report lower levels of general health, and are more likely to report that they are sicker than they were one year ago.

Surprisingly, loneliness impacts people’s description of their overall health more than twice as much as being older. The impact of loneliness is also about one third larger then the effect of socio-economic status, which public health research has long established as an important predictor of health outcomes.

CARP’s social isolation and loneliness survey was completed by 5,308 CARP members from every province and territory, except Nunavut. This poll was conducted by e-mail from April 17, 2017, to March 1th, 2017. 99.4% of respondents were over 55.