Keep on keeping on? You better believe it

Consultant Geoff Pearman’s message to an Invercargill audience was that people are continuing to work past 65 through choice and necessity. He’s not making it up: we have the second largest workforce participation of over-65s in the OECD and not always is it because people are living longer, healthier, and still approach the very thought of working with a sense of vim and vigour.

The fact is that we’re a society coping with an ageing generation of baby boomers and, for many, personal finances require them to keep working.

Not only because of their here-and-now situations but because the retirement years stretch far longer, for far more of us, than they used to.

Back in the day, former Invercargill property businessman Louis Crimp had an offer of lifetime leases for people who were asset rich but income poor.

Sell their homes, retain some of the proceeds for a more pleasurable retirement, and with the rest buy a lifetime lease on one of his properties.

This would provide them with security of a roof over their head.

When they (one way or another) moved on, Louis got the property back and everyone was a winner, with the rather conspicuous exception of anyone with stake in an inheritance.

It wasn’t one of his better schemes.

For whatever reason, perhaps talked out of it by the kids, few people took up the offer and it soon became apparent that the expectations of turnover were astray.

The average age people lived to was calculated from birth.

But these retirees had already negotiated those perilous years of, say, youthful driving and middleaged coronaries.

So if 65 years was your starting point you were, as a group, likely to live notably beyond the average lifespan.

What we have now is a generation that is living longer, and making up a far greater proportion of the population than before.

So, for all their years of taxpayer contribution, they have fewer taxpayers coming up behind them. It would be censorious, simplistic, and all sorts of unhelpful to be scolding individuals for not having saved so very much harder throughout their lives.

Retirement planning isn’t solely a matter of personal responsibility, there’s a societal, governmental imperative too and our collective performance in this respect has been, we’re going to say, imperfect.

So there are good, or certainly compelling, reasons why many among us need to work longer. We all have to deal with that reality.

The rest of us need to acknowledge this, and wherever possible help provide ways for this to happen.

And yes that means putting real thought and effort into the extent employers can offer flexible conditions.

What we have now is a generation that is living longer, and making up a far greater proportion of the population than before.