You’re tired of bosses. You’re tired of agendas. If one more person populates your Google calendar with a meeting you didn’t ask for, you’re going to…retire. Why not, assuming your financial house is in order. Chris Farrell, an economics correspondent and personal finance guru for Marketplace Money, has an unexpected answer: “It’s so exciting to have that first cocktail at 4 p.m.,” he says of retirement. “And then you realize that no one cares if you drink at noon.” So what are you going to do with the next 20 years of your life?
Chris Farrell will discuss tapping your creativity later in life on October 3 at 10:30 a.m. at the MIA.
Unretire. That’s what a lot of baby boomers may be doing, with more on the way, as Farrell explains in his new book, Unretirement: How Baby Boomers Are Changing the Way We Think About Work, Community, and the Good Life (Bloomsbury, $26). On October 3 at 10:30 a.m., he’ll talk about the trend at the MIA, among paintings by Henri Matisse, the poster, um, child for creative unretirees.
“Many people are realizing now that what they really want is a long vacation,” Farrell says. And by long he doesn’t mean a 20- or 30-year retirement, just enough to celebrate the end of an era. But nor is he talking about returning to the full-time routine of 40- or 50-hour weeks. “This isn’t about working for The Man,” he clarifies. “You’ve done that.” But boomers are living longer, staying healthier, and looking for just as much purpose and meaning in the latter stage of life as they did in their work, which for more and more people means, well, working—using their skills, doing what they’re good at. Unretiring.
That doesn’t mean it’s Wal-Mart greeter time. As he traveled around the country researching the book, Farrell found retirees opening coffee shops, driving personal taxis, freelancing, volunteering, working a few days a week at a nonprofit and the rest on the cabin or visiting kids.
Which is where Matisse comes in. “There are so many stereotypes about aging,” Farrell says, “like older people aren’t creative or innovative.” But research suggests that artists are often doing their best work later in life. And Matisse is evidence of that: the colorful paper cut-outs he began at the end of his life are now his most beloved works, soon to be celebrated in a show at MOMA. “You hear one old guy complaining about technology and the stereotype is confirmed for you,” says Farrell. “And that can affect your own expectation for yourself: If you don’t expect yourself to be creative in 30 years, you won’t be.”