09/01/2025
Embracing Retirement
By Ron Elsdon
What does retirement mean? Does it mean withdrawal, as defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary? Or does it suggest words like relax, happy, travel, family, fun, success, freedom, money, fulfilled, as MIT found when asking people in America to describe “life after career” (Intentional Wealth Management, 2019). Some people may feel excited about retirement, others may be surprised to feel ambivalent. I felt ambivalent when phasing into retirement over a three-year period, about ten years ago.
This article explores how to replace ambivalence with an embrace of exploration and growth as central to retirement. This matters for career development professionals, for clients, and for communities. While the average retirement age in the United States varies by state, gender, and occupation, most people retire in their sixties (Guardian, 2025, Warren, 2024). Projections show the number of Americans aged sixty-five and older increasing from sixty-one million in 2024 (United States Census Bureau, 2025) to eighty-two million by 2050 (Population Reference Bureau, 2024). Thirty-three countries have larger percentages of the population aged sixty-five and older than the United States (United States Census Bureau, 2023), so retirement is a global issue now and for many years to come.
Factors that Affect Retirement
Several factors affect retirement, including:
- Finances. Findings are contradictory. For example, one study shows two-thirds of peak baby boomers are not financially prepared for retirement, even though 30.4 million Americans will turn age 65 between 2024 and 2030 (Alliance for Lifetime Income, 2024). However, another study shows that two-thirds of American workers feel confident in their ability to live comfortably throughout their retirement (Employee Benefit Research Institute, 2025).
- Health. Health may constrain choices, and health can change over time along with the experience of retirement.
- Locus of control. Whether retirement is voluntary or imposed, for example due to workplace restructuring (Hartman, 2025), affects our perspective.
- Responsibilities. Family caregiving responsibilities can influence our time availability and where we live.
Bearing these factors in mind, the next area to explore is what will be included in life as a retiree.
Creating a Retirement Portfolio of Opportunities
Retirement differs fundamentally from conventional employment, where a boss assesses performance based on the employer’s goals. For the retiree, retirement involves guiding personal direction and assessing this in meeting intrinsic needs, building meaningful relationships, and contributing to community well-being. Retirement resembles a nontraditional, entrepreneurial career path (Elsdon, 2014) as a continually evolving portfolio of opportunities. Retirement can be abrupt, or gradual if it involves part-time work or self-employment. This affects both the emotional and practical experience of retirement. Potential components of a retirement portfolio include:
- Personal growth and health
- Physical exercise
- For some, exercise may include going to a gym to work out, while others prefer walking or mind-body exercises (for example, tai chi) alone or with friends. Each day before breakfast, I go for a three to four-mile walk, usually while listening to an audiobook. It is a beautiful and calming way to start the day.
- Physical exercise
- Mental stimulation
- Retirement is an opportunity to explore areas where there was limited time in the past. This may include exploring new areas of learning, developing new skills, or applying existing skills in new ways. For me, this includes:
- Reading, where the Libby app, available at no cost through our local library, has been a godsend. Recent discoveries include a remarkable biography (Caro, 1974), a beautiful description of raising a wild hare (Dalton, 2025), and an engaging mystery series with a psychotherapist protagonist (Goodreads, n.d.).
- Learning the piano with an online program Piano Marvel. The program is good, the learner (me) - not so good.
- Exploring courses in music, art, literature, religion, history, and philosophy through The Great Courses.
- Authoring occasional articles.
- Retirement is an opportunity to explore areas where there was limited time in the past. This may include exploring new areas of learning, developing new skills, or applying existing skills in new ways. For me, this includes:
- Community engagement.
- Volunteering is a fulfilling way to give back while utilizing an enjoyable skill. Career development professionals have the helping skills and competencies to assist clients with identifying suitable opportunities – and applying them to their own lives. Volunteering with an organization that wants and needs your contributions, whose purpose holds personal meaning, and that is sufficiently well-organized to accommodate volunteers (Elsdon, 2018) supports the community engagement component of retirement. For example, I now volunteer as a tutor in an excellent adult literacy program sponsored by our local library system (Contra Costa County Library).
- Family involvement
- Retirement can bring the gift of spending more time with family. In retirement, my wife and I enjoyed looking after our grandchildren when they were younger, and now we enjoy family vacations and events like graduations.
- Travel
- Retirement can be a time to explore travel destinations if resources permit. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, we visited four stunning areas in the United States and Canada with Road Scholar.
- Advocacy
- Career development professionals can use their advocacy training to assist their clients in pursuing an active role in areas of concern, or to select their own issues to engage in. Today, with our country’s values and identity challenged, political activism is critical. I participate in peaceful demonstrations and support social justice causes.
- Spiritual engagement
- Retirement is often a time for reflection and reevaluation of purpose in life. Joining progressive spiritual communities that value inclusion deepens this for me. This has included conducting oral history interviews, building on career development skills.
- Practical activities
- Practical activities may include household projects, crafts, and hobbies (such as photography, gardening, and cooking), or care appointments as needed.
Tools that offer insights into career direction can also help in selecting and guiding a personally-directed retirement portfolio (Elsdon, 2014). For example, the Wheel of Life, self-assessment of importance and satisfaction in various areas, and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) assessment of personality preferences (Briggs Myers, 2015) can be explored by the professional and client. In retirement, those with a more extraverted MBTI preference may seek interaction with others, while those more introverted may enjoy solitary endeavors. Those with a sensing preference may seek practical activities, and those with an intuitive preference may prefer reflective endeavors. Those with a judging preference may value a structured day, and those with a perceiving preference may value spontaneity. Objective decisions about a path forward may suit those with a thinking preference, while subjective decisions may appeal to those with a feeling preference.
For some, retirement means filling every moment; for others, it will be about creating meaningful space, about being rather than doing.
Challenges and Joys of Retirement
Challenges the retiree may encounter include:
- Adjusting to increased time in a relationship with a spouse/partner who may or may not be retired. For example, I endeavor, with mixed success, not to infringe on my wife’s space and time, which was developed over the years while I worked full time.
- Adjusting to new ways of handling finances, such as the changing nature of income, and role of investments.
- Occasionally, some may feel a sense of invisibility. As career development professionals we can help clients process such feelings.
Enriching joys for the retiree include:
- Living a spontaneous, values-based life.
- Learning and growing.
- Giving back.
- Enjoying family time.
The joys of retirement can far exceed the challenges. This has been true for me. May that also be true for you and your clients.
References
Alliance for Lifetime Income. (2024). Two-thirds of peak baby boomers are not financially prepared for retirement. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/two-thirds-of-peak-baby-boomers-are-not-financially-prepared-for-retirement-302120313.html
Briggs Myers, I. (2015). Introduction to myers-briggs type, seventh edition. CPP, Inc. (now The Myers-Briggs Company).
Caro, R. (1974). The power broker. Knopf.
Contra Costa County Library. Project second chance. https://ccclib.org/psc/
Dalton, C. (2025). Raising hare: A memoir. Pantheon.
Elsdon, R. (2018). Becoming a volunteer. NCDA Career Convergence. https://www.ncda.org/aws/NCDA/pt/sd/news_article/159209/_PARENT/CC_layout_details/false
Elsdon, R. (2014). How to build a nontraditional career path: Embracing economic disruption. Praeger.
Employee Benefit Research Institute. (2025). Retirement confidence survey. https://www.ebri.org/retirement/retirement-confidence-survey
Goodreads (n.d.) Frieda Klein series. https://www.goodreads.com/series/67491-frieda-klein
Guardian. (2025). The average retirement age in the US. https://www.guardianlife.com/retirement/average-age
Hartman, R. (2025). What is the average retirement age in the U.S.? https://money.usnews.com/money/retirement/aging/articles/what-is-the-average-retirement-age
Intentional Wealth Management. (2019). Words used to describe retirement say a lot. https://www.iwmfinancial.com/blog/words-used-to-describe-retirement-say-a-lo
Population Reference Bureau. (2024). Fact sheet: Aging in the United States. https://www.prb.org/resources/fact-sheet-aging-in-the-united-states/
United States Census Bureau. (2025). Older adults outnumber children in 11 states and nearly half of U.S. Counties. https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2025/older-adults-outnumber-children.html
United States Census Bureau. (2023). U.S. Older population grew from 2010 to 2020 at fastest rate since 1880 to 1890. https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/05/2020-census-united-states-older-population-grew.html
Warren, K. (2024). What’s the average retirement age? Factors, trends, and variations. https://www.investopedia.com/average-retirement-age-8602909
Ron Elsdon is a retired author, speaker, and founder of organizations in the career and workforce development fields. His published works include: How to Build a Nontraditional Career Path: Embracing Economic Disruption (Praeger, 2014); editor of Business Behaving Well: Social Responsibility, from Learning to Doing (Potomac Books, 2013); editor of Building Workforce Strength: Creating Value through Workforce and Career Development (Praeger, 2010); and author of Affiliation in the Workplace: Value Creation in the New Organization (Praeger, 2003). He holds a doctorate in chemical engineering from Cambridge University, a master’s in career development from John F. Kennedy University, and a bachelor’s in chemical engineering from Leeds University. Ron can be reached at ronelsdon@gmail.com. His website is www.elsdon.com.