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Planning Your Post-Retirement Career
Marc Freedman, founder and CEO of Civic Ventures and author of “The Big Shift: Navigating the New Stage Beyond Midlife.”
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Featured Guest: Marc Freedman, founder and CEO of Civic Ventures and author of The Big Shift: Navigating the New Stage Beyond Midlife.
SARAH GREEN: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I’m Sarah Green. With people living into their 90s, the prospect of a 30 year retirement has become a financial dilemma facing the developed world. But it’s also a personal dilemma since, after all, you can only play so much golf. Today, we’ll be talking about this issue with Marc Freedman, the founder and CEO of Civic Ventures and author of The Big Shift: Navigating the New Stage Beyond Midlife. Mark, thanks so much for joining us today.
MARC FREEDMAN: Thanks Sarah. It’s a pleasure.
SARAH GREEN: So Marc, what is the new stage beyond midlife?
MARC FREEDMAN: Well, there’s a period that’s opening up that used to be occupied by retirement, but it’s filling up 10,000 a day of people who are entering their 60s, moving towards their 70s, and are nowhere close to being old or retired in any traditional sense. And yet they’ve moved out of midlife. I think of this period as the oxymoronic years. They’re the young-old, the working retired. I’m sure somebody soon is going to characterize them as the walking dead. But I think we’re having a very difficult time embracing this period for what it is and continue to describe this group as half of one existing category and half of another.
SARAH GREEN: You know, it strikes me that you’re talking here about the baby boomers and the people slightly older than them. And aren’t these the people who also invented our concept of being a teenager? I mean, why do they have to keep inventing these new life stages?
MARC FREEDMAN: It turns out that the teenage notion is 100 years old. That was invented at the beginning of the last century by a 60 year old, a guy by the name of G. Stanley Hall, who was the father of American psychology. And that notion of a teenager came 40 years later with the birth of Seventeen magazine. But I think it’s fair to say that the boomers embraced youth with a relish that had never been seen before and really shaped what that period in life has meant ever since.
SARAH GREEN: So when you’re talking about these kinds of big life changes, they’re definitely big macroeconomic, sociological, really macro phenomenons, but at the same time, it sounds like they’re also incredibly personal. And I think that really comes through in the book. Because when you’re sort of at the vanguard of something like this, you don’t have an example. You are the example. How challenging do you think that is for individuals?
MARC FREEDMAN: People are having to make it up as they go along, which is fine if it’s just a few people for a brief hiatus. But we’re looking at tens of millions of people for a period that could approximate midlife in duration. And that’s why I think it’s not really about the boomers, even though they’re the first major wave to go through this midlife migration. They’re having to do all the heavy lifting, figure out what their identity is in this period, how to navigate their way from what’s last to what’s next, how to make the most of a period that’s been uncharted. I think it’s Gen X, Gen Y, those longer living generations that are coming on their heels that will fully inherit the possibilities of this period, if the boomers get it right as the first group in a mass way going through this transition.
SARAH GREEN: So how is what you’re describing here different from our typical understanding of a midlife crisis?
MARC FREEDMAN: Well, you know, we tend to think of a midlife crisis as an irrational outburst, usually involving a reckless affair and a red sports car. But I think the crisis that people are facing in this period is an identity crisis. How do you characterize yourself? What’s success in a period that could be a quarter century? And it’s also a crisis in making a transition in a society that makes it easy to disengage, to move into retirement, but doesn’t really help people prepare for another phase of contribution, of engagement, of development. A lot of these people are having to sneak into programs and efforts designed for their children.
I write in the book about a woman who went into Teach for America in her late 50s because her daughter had had a great experience. She wanted to become a teacher but couldn’t find a comparable vehicle for people who were passing beyond midlife. And so I think we can do better than these side doors and back doors and oxymoronic identities. I think we can really help this vast number of people navigate their shift into a new stage in a way where they find their footing in society realizes an experience dividend.
SARAH GREEN: Well, it is true that our businesses, our schools, our institutions are not really set up for this kind of career path. How are all those institutions going to have to change to accommodate this new wave?
MARC FREEDMAN: In many ways we set up our social institutions, our public policies, even our personal expectations for the old lifespan of three score and ten. And that worked well when we were living into our early 70s. But now we’re looking at the potential of five score as a lifespan. Half the children born in the developed world since 2000 will see their 100th birthdays. And so when you stretch the lifespan so significantly, you can’t just stretch the existing stages. 30 year retirements are unattainable. They’re unsustainable.
We really need to go back to the drawing board. And it’s almost a design project. How do we design the life course so that it fits with these new 21st century lifespans and so that people can balance the responsibilities and joys of contribution and productivity more evenly across the lifespan, instead of loading everything up in the first half of life and then getting this balloon payment of disengagement at the end?
SARAH GREEN: So it sounds like what you’re saying is this is not just advice or something to be thinking about for people who are 50 or 60. This is really something that people who are in their 20s or 30s or 40s should already be thinking about.
MARC FREEDMAN: Right. Because they’re the ones who are going to most fully inhabit this phase. But even more, in creating new phases of life– and now many people are talking about the period between adolescence and adulthood becoming emerging adulthood as so many 20 somethings end up moving back with their parents and defer marriage and career decisions. So as we’re coming up with this new map of life, each new stage changes every other stage.
So if there’s a period of fulfillment, contribution, productivity, learning, engagement in the 60s and 70s, maybe young people will make different decisions when they’re starting out, knowing that there’s more than one bite at the apple. Maybe they’ll invest less in education when they’re 18 or 19, knowing that it’s going to be hard to predict what they’re going to want to do at 58 and 59. So I think it’s going to change the pattern of careers. It’s going to change the pattern of education. And I think it could make for longer, better lives.
SARAH GREEN: You had conversations with, I don’t even know how many people, to write this book. Are there one or two stories that have really stuck with you throughout this project?
MARC FREEDMAN: Well, I recently read an article in TIME magazine that talked about the doubling of boomers who are going to divinity school. And the article was titled “Holy in Rollers.” And that really fit with experience I had. I met many people who were going back to school, who were doing internships, who were trying to start a new trajectory in their 50s and 60s. But like the woman who was featured in that TIME magazine article I mentioned, they’ve had to go deeply into debt to pull that off, to live like a grad student, or in the description of one, like a nun.
Meredith McKenzie was a former real estate agent in southern California who decided her real passion in life was restoring rivers. But in order to pull that off, she had to move into a 250 square foot garage for five years so she could navigate this expensive, experimental transition into an entirely new field. People who go back and get a master’s degree in divinity often have to spend $100,000. I think we need new ways to help people prepare for, save for, manage to support themselves during this transition that’s becoming more and more widespread.
SARAH GREEN: So that’s sort of an interesting case where you’re talking about people needing more education to change careers. What about if you’re dealing with someone who just wants to maybe stay in their same career but take a slightly different path? I mean, it seems like, in terms of finding those opportunities, one challenge would be that a lot of younger managers maybe aren’t comfortable managing people who are so much more experienced than they are and who might be used to being the manager. Is that a problem that you heard people talking about? Like that kind of problem of, I’m like 65, and they think I should retire, and I don’t want to?
MARC FREEDMAN: Yeah. You know, there’s a great Joseph Campbell quote, “Midlife is when you get to the top of the ladder and discover it’s leaning against the wrong wall.” And I think that there’s a misconception that you’re supposed to– whether the wall’s right or wrong– that you’re supposed to keep ascending the ladder as you get older and older. You need more and more authority, more and more money. But a lot of the people I talked to wanted to shift to a different definition of success in this period. And many of them had a deep desire to work with young people, to help mentor young people, and to be mentored by young people. And they were oftentimes willing to sacrifice formal authority, even income, in return for a new kind of fulfillment, a sense that they were using their accumulated experience in ways that were not only personally meaningful, but that meant something beyond themselves, that gave them an opportunity to live a legacy.
SARAH GREEN: If there were one thing that you could magically change about the way our society is structured or the way people understand this concept of age and retirement– If you could just change one thing, what would it be?
MARC FREEDMAN: Well, I would like there to be a gap year for grown-ups. Gap years have become increasingly popular for young people who are working too hard in high school to get into college in a very competitive environment. But we’ve got all of their parents who are working for 30 years in extreme jobs, trying to raise families at the same time. And they’re winded by the time they hit this shifting juncture in life.
And I think people are also very narrowly focused on getting through their responsibilities. A disruptive year or two where they got a chance to step back, to catch their breath, to have some experiences that are a potential window into future direction, I think that could enable people not just to work for another year, but to have another career. It could help them get the perspective that they need and the renewal so that they can have another phase of their lives where, in many cases, they’ll do their most important work.
SARAH GREEN: I really like that idea. Is that something that sort of came out of your own personal experience? Or is that sort of a distant dream that you hope to have one day yourself?
MARC FREEDMAN: Well, I tried to have a gap three months when I hit my 50th birthday, because I’d been working long hours. And I actually have young kids. And I planned a fantasy trip to Australia. But I quickly realized that three months in Australia with young children was the kind of thing you needed to take a sabbatical to recover from, not the sabbatical.
And I ended up in a car trip just up the coast from San Francisco where I live. And at the hotel where we stayed at, I qualified for an AARP discount and had to request two cribs. And so I became my own oxymoron in that moment. But I think my own realization of the need to work much longer than my father’s generation did has also helped me to feel like there’s an opportunity to do something different than I’ve done in the first phase of my career, but also the necessity of taking a break and doing exploration so that it’s possible to make the most of that new trajectory.
SARAH GREEN: Well, keeping in mind that it’s always easier to give advice than to actually take it, what advice would you give to people listening who might be sort of going through a similar situation right now, where they are feeling like it’s time for change, but they’re also kind of feeling like, well, maybe I should just retire, and I don’t know what I want to do?
MARC FREEDMAN: Well, I think for me, the most encouraging piece of advice is to recognize that this period could be 20 years or 25 years. And so there’s an opportunity to experiment, to go back to school, to have some mishaps and misdirection, and still recover and have a body of work that is deeply fulfilling and that uses one’s experience. It may well be an opportunity of creativity.
I think one of the lessons we’re learning is that innovators and entrepreneurs of a particular type, experimenters, end up doing their best work late. So I think there could be surprises. And I think there’s enough time to figure this out. You don’t have to get it right all at once. And it’s also enough time so it’s worth investing upfront in your own human capital.
SARAH GREEN: Well, Marc, thanks so much for chatting with us today.
MARC FREEDMAN: It’s a pleasure. Thank you.
SARAH GREEN: That was Marc Friedman, CEO of Civic Ventures. And the book is The Big Shift. For more on career planning for your whole career, visit hbr.org.