Short Stuff: The Retirement Curse

Josh Clark (0:04)

Hey, and welcome to The Short Stuff. Josh, Chuck, Jerry, Dave, Short Stuff, Tally Ho.

Chuck Bryant (0:11)

Yeah, we're talking about retirement today, and specifically what can be referred to as the retirement curse, which is this idea that, you know, maybe you're doing fine in life and you're chugging along at your job, and then you retire and you encounter all sorts of problems, maybe mental health problems, maybe physical health problems, and retirement can be the trigger to that kind of thing.

Josh Clark (0:37)

Mm-hmm, yeah. I mean, I think it's one of those things where a lot of people are familiar with the anecdotally, like maybe they've seen somebody, you know, just their health declines very quickly, or it's just something changes for the worst from retirement, and it's actually quantifiable.

And apparently, five to six years after retirement, this is just the average American, I suspect it's not quite as bad elsewhere. And in fact, I couldn't find mention of the retirement curse as we're presenting it anywhere else. It does seem to be a semi-American phenomenon.

SPEAKER_3 (1:11)

Interesting.

Josh Clark (1:13)

But there's this, the average American shows a six to nine percent decline in mental health within the first five to six years after retirement. A five to six percent increase in illness condition, right?

SPEAKER_3 (1:25)

Yeah.

Josh Clark (1:26)

A five to six percent increase in difficulties with daily activities.

And when they control all the other variables, they're like, it seems to be retirement. But of course, retirement itself is not doing this to you. It's all the life changes that come from retirement.

Chuck Bryant (1:44)

Yeah, exactly. It's that transition. How you deal with that is really, really key and something that you really got to think about going into it. I hope if you're a person of retirement age, you've got a plan in place. We're going to talk more about that. But it seems like the worst cases are when people just retire, and all of a sudden, they're like, wait a minute, I have my days free all the time. I'm not going to this place anymore. If you went to an office, let's say, I'm not surrounded by people every day that I normally might be.

Going to work is mental engagement. And even if you're not doing hard labor, just getting up and getting out of bed, and going to an office, and moving about the world represents some kind of physical activity. And especially if when you retire, you just kind of hit the couch or the recliner. That's a big difference.

Josh Clark (2:36)

Yeah. Also, like those people that you're interacting with, even if you work from home, just interacting with them on calls or via email, like you don't have that all of a sudden. If you start emailing those same people, they're like, you retired, go do your thing. I'm trying to work here.

You know, they don't let you in on calls any longer. And so if you don't already have a pretty tight circle of friends outside of work, which a lot of Americans do not, especially as you get older, it just gets harder and harder to make friends. And because you spend a lot of your time at work, those people become your friends de facto. If you don't have that network already in place, you need to go figure out how to do it because that is probably ultimately what's behind the decline more than anything.

Chuck Bryant (3:22)

Yeah, for sure. And like we said, you need to have a plan in place for, we'll talk about the exercise and social engagement and stuff like that, or maybe just keep working or work part-time or volunteer.

And maybe we'll take a break and talk a little bit about those work statistics right after this.

Josh Clark (3:39)

Oh, yeah.

Chuck Bryant (3:58)

All right. I got this from the Bureau of Labor Statistics here in the United States. Kind of the picture over the years of when people stop working. I think in 1948, the rate of people age 65 and older working was 27 percent, 47 percent of men, 9 percent of women.

Age 65 and older started trending down in the latter half of the 20th century and hit its lowest point in 1985, and only 10 percent of people over the age of 65 were working. And since 1985, that started to grow, grow and started to trend upward, like people working later and later, because sometimes economic necessity, sometimes just preference. And then the last year I had available, at least, was 2024, when it was about 19 percent of people age 65 and over still working, and I think 38 percent of those were doing so part-time.