CareerBuilder conducted a survey wherein they asked older workers about retirement plans.
Retirement? What’s that? The economic downturn prevents 60% of people who want to retire — who have worked and scrimped and saved their whole lives long in hopes of living the good life — from leaving the work force.
There are those of us who simply don’t want to retire. I, for example, have a delightful time working, I enjoy my business enormously and I plan to go to my grave with my fingers on the keyboard clacking out some client-related legal document. That doesn’t say I don’t enjoy having the option to retire, and it certainly doesn’t say that I don’t enjoy taking time off to visit some tropical paradise.
Some just want to go and live on that tropical island. They’ve been saving for it all their lives. They dreamed from the time they were tots about leaving the winter behind as they fall off the edge of the workaday world and into their dream.
The dream ain’t happening. Money doesn’t let it happen. It’ll be a few years before these folks feel secure enough to take that plunge.
This may not be a bad thing: I have it from the horse’s mouth that retirement isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. And, according to MedPageToday, early retirement may spell — well, disaster.
So suck it up, Boomers, and keep the work fires burning. Starting a business is a grand way to keep your finger in the non-retired pot — and on your own terms.