Decades before the study of retirement became the “thing” it is today, a 24-year-old Ken Dychtwald turned his psychology doctoral thesis into a book, Bodymind. His seminal 1977 study of how our physical and mental states interact and influence one another led him to establish the SAGE Project, one of the first preventive health research projects in the U.S. designed to improve the physical and mental well-being of older adults. That work encouraged Dychtwald to specialize in gerontology and, in 1986, to found Age Wave, a think tank and consultancy firm that advises Fortune 500 companies and governments on the social and financial implications of the world’s aging population. His 1988 book, Age Wave, a prophetic look at how aging baby boomers would fundamentally reshape American society, business, and healthcare, became a best seller, establishing Dychtwald as our nation’s guru of aging.
The author of 17 other books related to living as we get older, Ken Dychtwald, is now 76. I’ve interviewed Ken in the past and moderated a discussion with him at one of the retirement-income conferences I helped organize while at InvestmentNews. I thought it would be interesting to find out what this boomer and expert on aging thinks about the subject now that he is experiencing it firsthand. Is it different from what he thought it would be like? Highlights of our recent discussion, edited for clarity and length, follow:
Evan Cooper: Here we both are — sort of in retirement, I guess. What surprises you about it?
Ken Dychtwald: Well, I’m not retired, and you’re not retired. I can’t tell you how weird it is. I’ve been working in the aging field for 52 years now. For years, I’ve been talking about all the things that happen when you get older, and now here I am. I mean, how strange is all of that? I find myself surprised now in four or five ways—some good, and some not so good.
First, I find that I’m not interested in being retired. Yes, I want more time off and the freedom to have a more flexible schedule and more time to travel. But let’s remember how we got to the idea of “retirement” in the first place. It was sort of an experiment created in the 1930s to address the 25% unemployment rate. President Roosevelt wanted to create more opportunities for young people in the workplace, so he proposed Social Security. The initial stipend was $220 a year, which wasn’t going to break the bank, especially since not many people would qualify for the benefit.
By the 1970s, many more people were receiving Social Security, and the belief was that retirement was like a grand vacation for a few years. Now, a quarter of the way through the 21st century, people are retiring at pretty much the same age as when the date was set in 1935, but many of us still have 20 or 25 years ahead of us. That’s a very long time. There’s a statistic that the average retiree in America watches 47 hours of television a week, which to me suggests people don’t really feel they have much purpose or a chance to contribute.
EC: I doubt that you sit around and watch TV all day.
KD: No. I still work, but not as many hours. I think of work as a portfolio. For about half of the work I do, I don’t look to get paid. It’s a wonderful time for giving back, and I’m trying some different things. For example, this past spring I went back to Newark, N.J., and gave a talk at the high school I had graduated from 59 years ago. It was one of the most interesting encounters I’ve ever had.
I’ve noticed, too, that attitudes toward working as you get older have changed. It used to be that if you met someone and they said they were 56 and retired, you’d say, “Wow, congratulations.” Now, people who have had successful careers that don’t involve heavy physical labor often keep working in some way. There are famous examples of that, like Warren Buffett, the Rolling Stones and Martha Stewart, but many other people not in the public eye have decided that fully retiring from work is not for them. That’s point one.
EC: Point two?
KD: There’s so much about life at this age that’s confusing. And I don’t mean a little bit confusing, I mean utterly confusing. If you gave me $1 million in cash and asked me to explain Medicare, I couldn’t do it—and I’m Mr. Age Wave! There’s Part A, Part B, donut holes, Medicare Advantage, Medicare and Medicaid. For the first seven or eight years, I’d get a Medicare statement that said, “Your Medicare Bill.” Then, on the upper right, it said, “This is not a Bill.” What is it?
And it’s not just Medicare. It’s all the documents from insurance companies and financial firms, the complexity of taxes, and the ever-growing threat of elder scams. I’m a somewhat clever guy, I’ve been in the field for 52 years, and I’m fortunate to still have great cognitive health, but it’s all utterly confusing and impossible to understand. People over 65 generally are ashamed to admit that they are confused and don’t understand this stuff, but I’m okay admitting it. And what about people for whom English is a second language, or people who didn’t have white-collar jobs, or people who were not used to reading 10-page legal documents? I can’t imagine how they make sense of it all.
KD: Point three: Gravity. It seems there’s more of it around than when I was younger. Now, it’s harder to move around and do things. I’ve got aches and pains I never had before. My wife and I were in Rome last year, and I looked at the Spanish Steps and thought, “Maybe I’ll skip those.” Even though I work out every day and eat a very healthy diet, being in the physical world is harder. And I imagine that people who are overweight, have arthritis or have battled cancer really feel it. We haven’t set the world up so it’s easy to maneuver.
KD: Point four is about purpose. When I was in my youthful or middle years, I was taken seriously—or not—based on what I was producing and what I was performing. Now, I go into a lot of situations where the assumption is that I’m going to be less; that I’ve lost some of my intelligence or talent. I see it in the questions I get asked and in the way people look at me or leave me out of the conversation. That’s part of the collateral damage that seems to come with retirement—people assume you are less able and less effective after a 65th birthday.
The last thing I want to say, and this might surprise you, has to do with role models. I look around, and I don’t see many or any role models anymore.
EC: For younger people or for you?
KD: Younger people may assume that I’m a role model for them, or maybe a “mentor,” a word that has become very popular in the last decade. But who do I have? There don’t seem to be many people my age or older who I admire and respect and can get some tips from as to how to do aging better. The opposite. I think this is a time when older men are not showing up in a responsible or impressive way, and there are many older men who I don’t want to be like.
Let me go sideways for a minute. In the United States alone, 80 million people are over the age of 60, and we think they’re supposed to be on vacation rather than doing purposeful things. But I have found that the majority of people who are retired are not enjoying themselves. Since we have the greatest concentration of knowledge, wisdom and experience in the history of the world, I would argue that we need to put those resources to use by having older people help to teach in our schools, help in our churches and synagogues and mosques, and help in advocating for young people who are going through a really rough time right now in terms of mental health.
We created the Peace Corps 70 years ago. Today, I think we need an Elder Corps, where millions of older people can rise up and be the elders in their communities. As boomers, we need to do more and be more; be leaders and contributors versus just being retired. For retirees and society as a whole, our current “retirement” model is wrong.
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