The concept of retirement, in a traditional sense, is a rough transition for any retiree: After spending the vast majority of one’s life clocking in to a full-time career, there’s a radical and abrupt shift not only to how you spend your days, but to how you cultivate your sense of meaning. If you’re lucky, you’ve risen early to work at a job you love or can at least tolerate; but absent your old way of life, you might be staring at the clock, remembering your morning commute and the idle chatter of former colleagues.
Reasons for leaving retirement behind—also known as “unretirement”— are different for many people: You likely aren’t poised to rake in tens of millions of dollars in one fell-swoop like the boxer Floyd Mayweather, who recently announced that he’s leaving retirement (yet again) to fight the YouTuber Logan Paul. Mayweather’s reasons are simple—to make a fortune by clowning an internet personality in the boxing ring. Yours are invariably different, and pertain very little to some show business spectacle. So don’t use Floyd Mayweather as a guide.
There are ways to do it correctly, so you’re not still devoting your life to a career in an unwavering sense, but finding balance that makes your relationship with work and aging a healthier one. Here’s are some reasons to potentially leave retirement behind.
Boredom and loneliness
Boredom is a pervasive aspect of aging in general. Without a work routine that dictates much of your day, you might start to feel adrift. A poll last year conducted by Britain’s National Citizen’s Service found that 40 percent of the retirees surveyed worked part-time just so they could enjoy a modicum of social interaction. Among the 1,000 retirees surveyed, the three most common words used to describe their retirement were “boring,” “lonely,” and “quiet.”
Human connection is an integral part of human contentedness, so if you find yourself meandering through your days and feeling lonely, there’s nothing wrong with seeking out work. Part-time jobs are a good middle ground between the slow pace of retirement and the demands of a traditional career. Indeed, by re-entering the job market, whether though part-time or full-time work, you’d be joining a growing cohort.
Kathleen Mullen, a RAND senior economist, told the New York Times in 2018:
We definitely see evidence that retirement is fluid. There’s less of the traditional schedule: work to a certain age, retire, see the world. We see people lengthening their careers.
Financial issues
Compared with many other big, powerful nations, the United States’ social safety net is pretty porous. With this in mind, it’s even more alarming that 66 percent of millennials feel they’re not on track for decent retirement savings, owing to the skyrocketing cost of housing, according to a 2019 survey by TD Ameritrade. A 2013 survey from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System found a similar situation for some retirees.
As the Center for American Progress wrote:
Among respondents ages 55 to 64—those nearest to retirement who already should have built up significant savings—the share who reported having no savings or pension was still 19 percent, or approximately one out of every five near-retirement households.
This has only been compounded by the pandemic economy. If work is a necessity, and not a means to feel more connected and purposeful, getting back into the professional world is a no-brainer. Not everyone has a pension or bulky 401(k) to fall back on, and while this is a sad reality of the 21st century economy, there’s still plenty of low-lift jobs to consider in older age.
Fighting ageism in the workplace
One positive reason you might consider coming out of retirement: you can be a shining example to those around you of a capable and dependable older age colleague. A 2018 report from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found that ageism is rampant in the corporate world. But more seasoned workers tend to be wellsprings of institutional knowledge—and you can certainly use that to become an asset if you’re coming out of retirement.
Paul Rupert, the founder and CEO of Respectful Exits, a non-profit dedicated to finding age discrimination in the workplace, told AARP:
They know things that are essential to the company’s success, and if that knowledge is not captured and transmitted to the next generation, that company is losing a tremendous chunk of capital and it’ll eventually pay a price.
Rekindling a sense of pride and meaning
We’re not all lucky enough to love our jobs, but it’s true that getting up and striving to be productive within reason makes us happy. Happiness breeds productivity (though not necessarily vice-versa) so if finding a reason to get up in the morning raises your disposition and gives you a feeling of contentment, there’s no reason not to try your hand at working again.
It bears repeating that everyone’s reasons for unretirement are different. And it’s certainly a big decision that requires full study of whether it’s necessary, both financially and mentally. Chances are, however, that it just might be.