BC Business
Why all the moaning about the effects of the boomer retirement wave? Most of them will continue working, but in different roles. I find it interesting that most of the coverage of the latest data from the 2011 census focuses on how Canada is going to cope with the grey wave.
Baby boomer retirement | BCBusinessFor the boomers who can’t last on golf and bingo, retirement will mean a second act in their careers, not a curtain drop.
I find it interesting that most of the coverage of the latest data from the 2011 census focuses on how Canada is going to cope with the grey wave.
The statistics showed that nearly five million Canadians are age 65 or older, and that a record 42.4 per cent of the “working-age” group were between ages 45 and 64. The situation is especially “severe” in B.C. because we have the nation’s largest proportion of seniors.
That has raised alarms that we’re going to be a nation of old people who will all retire at 65 and depend on the government for support. Towns like Parksville, where more than 38 per cent of the population is over 65, will be the norm throughout the province, particularly in the warmer areas like Vancouver Island and the Thompson-Okanagan district.
Or, paradoxically, many of those new “seniors” will refuse to retire because they can’t afford to, and so will clog up the entire system – holding younger people in the middle, and even younger people at entry level.
What bunk.
This line of thought – crisis-mongering might be a better word – supposes that all those people reaching retirement age over the next 20 years are going to be living the same way as retirees do today.
Not a chance. Seventy is the new 65, and 80 is the new 70.
Some seniors will continue the cliches, of course, but many won’t. Almost every near-senior I know plans to work in some capacity after they reach retirement age, not because they have to, although that may be the case sometimes, but because they want to.
Baby boomers are not going to be content to sit around playing bingo or golfing all day or leading the leisurely lives so promoted by people trying to sell retirement investments.
While they may enjoy it occasionally, they would be bored silly if they had to spend all their time at it.
We’re living primarily in a knowledge-based business world now, where the impetus to retire because they are worn out physically doesn’t really exist any more, except for those with physical jobs. Today, a large reason people retire is because they want to do something else with their lives – start a second act, as one website puts it.
In some cases, that might be volunteering or “giving back.” But in many others, it will mean operating their own businesses.
They’ll become entrepreneurs. Maybe not the hard-driving ones we see among the younger cohorts, but entrepreneurs all the same. They’ll use their knowledge to operate lifestyle businesses that will keep them engaged well into their 70s.
Not exactly the burden on society that the census analysts predict.