PERHAPS THE MOST THOUGHT-PROVOKING take on retirement I’ve encountered comes from the author John D. MacDonald, in his long-running Travis McGee mystery series.
The main character, McGee, bills himself as a “salvage consultant,” helping people recover items that have been stolen and cannot be recovered through traditional means. For his efforts, he collects a lump sum, which he lives off until it runs out. Through the magic of storytelling, all his clients come to him on a referral basis and, conveniently, tend to contact him at the precise moment he’s almost broke. It’s at that point, in every book, he explains his theory of “retirement in installments.”
Here’s a typical version, from A Purple Place for Dying:
“I work when the money gets low. Otherwise I enjoy my retirement…. I’m taking it in installments, while I’m young enough to enjoy it. …I live as well as I want to live, but sometimes I have to go to work.”
Why, you might wonder, have I begun an essay about the serious topic of retirement by referencing an obvious product of fiction?
The answer is simple: Much like the Travis McGee series, most of our ideas about retirement are a kind of fantasy based on things that were invented during the twentieth century.
For instance, the term “Golden Years” was conjured up by the real-estate developer Del Webb, back in 1959, to promote the first “active adult” retirement community. Mr. Webb, it’s worth noting, made much of his fortune from hotels and casinos in Las Vegas. So here we can see one of the same people who helped create the glimmer of Sin City also created the vision of leisurely old age in Sun City.
Beyond mere advertising slogans, the 401(k) was invented in 1978, which means it’s just now reaching the stage where we can assess whether it is an effective tool for retirement. Based on some napkin math, the numbers don’t look good.
According to Fidelity Investments, the average 401(k) balance among boomers is about $267,900. And, according to Kiplinger, the average social security check is about $2,012. Put these figures together, and it means that if the average boomer wanted to live off their 401(k) and social security at a level equal to the median household income in Tennessee ($67,631), their savings would only last about six years. And that doesn’t factor in leaky roofs, broken HVAC units, surprise dental surgeries, or all the other kinds of bad luck that can arise.
In the face of this bleak accounting, I find value and comfort in McGee’s concept of “retirement in installments.” Instead of framing life as one long act of preparation, it stresses the importance of assessing one’s options and tradeoffs at every stage. It recognizes, for instance, that there is a distinct difference between a romantic getaway when you’re 30 years old and a romantic getaway when you’re 70 years old. Because this is a family-friendly publication, I won’t belabor the specifics of that opinion, but one of those getaways is more likely to involve lots of room service, and the other is more likely to involve conversations about arthritis.
A 30-year-old who’s consumed with the idea of saving as much as possible could note that the compound interest of skipping a romantic getaway now could provide the option to afford ten romantic getaways in 40 years. But the retirement-in-installments approach recognizes that you can never regain the option of “being 30.”
This is not a call to some “live in the moment” cliche but rather an encouragement to consider alternatives to our most popular visions of aging. In the next decade, many Americans will come to the realization that, despite notions spawned in the postwar years, retirement is not an inevitable next step, nor even likely. Rather than despair over or willfully ignore this fact, we have the chance to rethink how we invest—in our health, in our relationships, in our personal interests, and, yes, in our finances—to make the time we have left as meaningful and rewarding as possible.
And your best option is to start that process now.