For the past 5 years I have been committed to developing Encore Palm Beach County, a nonprofit to connect people 50+ with new work and volunteer opportunities. It was my belief that we have an enormous number of people who have retired here who have the skills, education and experience to help solve social problems. We began by gathering information from area nonprofits on the volunteer positions they seek to fill on our website as well as links to all the volunteer job boards we could find.

It is well-known that thousands of people are turning 65 every day in our country and will for some time to come. And many of those people are moving to Palm Beach County. Almost 50% of our population is over 50 presently and growing. Researchers such as those at the Stanford Center on Longevity have documented the benefit of volunteer engagement to healthy aging. And because of medical advances, a person who retires at 65 could live another 20 to 30 years in retirement. A retirement of leisure can become boring after a while.

And yet, the level of volunteerism has declined among people 50+ for a variety of reasons. And this was prior to the Pandemic which has further limited in person volunteering. According to the Florida Nonprofit Alliance, although Florida is the third most populous state in the nation, we rank 44th in charitable giving and 50th for volunteerism.

The Pandemic will not last forever. Encore Palm Beach County is developing several approaches in 2022 to reaching people in Palm Beach County more effectively with the message that they are needed, where they are needed, and how they will benefit by volunteering with a more rewarding and interesting retirement. When I work with people planning for retirement, more and more I meet people who are looking for more meaning and purpose in their lives, and volunteering is one way to have it. To learn more about my work as a volunteer leader with Encore Palm Beach County, go to our website: https://www.encorepbc.org/.

There has been much in the press during this election season about the tension between Trump supporters and others at the The Villages in Florida. There is a new documentary coming out called “Some Kind of Heaven” analyzing the pros and cons of living in an adult Disneyland focused on play and amusement in one’s later years.

Back in 2012 when I was thinking about downsizing my home and looking for a new smaller property to buy, I drove up to see the Villages. The housing units were nice, but too close together for my taste. I had a tour but saw immediately that it was entirely focused on creating an artificial Disneyland for adults. I don’t believe retirement should be just about amusing yourself. That can get old fast. I prefer activities with a sense of purpose as well as playing tennis and bridge (which I also did). I recognize not everyone feels that way, but there’s plenty of research and evidence that having a sense of purpose and engagement in life beyond yourself is the key to healthy aging. Also, I saw that there was too much pressure to conform. I don’t need people organizing my life for me. I’m good at doing that for myself and prefer to meet people in different settings and arenas of life. Also, the weather up there is not as good as in So. Florida near the Atlantic, too hot and buggy in the summer, too cold in the winter. So glad I saw for myself that it was not for me. Anybody thinking of moving to a new location in retirement should do a good amount of research first on the location and really understand themselves and what they need to be happy. . I ended up selling my big home in Boca Raton and moving to a one floor villa in Delray Beach and maintained all my old contacts and friends and things I enjoyed doing, saved money and accomplished my goals for myself.

Because of more than 50 years of working with people, and particularly because of my coaching work and my work with Encore Palm Beach County, I am aware that many retired people do not have a sense of purpose in their lives. They may be busy playing golf or cards and feel no need for a feeling of purpose. I certainly don’t feel everyone MUST be involved with purposeful activity, but many studies have shown that having purpose and being engaged with that purpose, is a key to healthy aging. But don’t take my word for it. Read what Paul Irving, Chair of the Milken Institute for the Future of Aging, has to say about it: https://www.milkeninstitute.org/sites/default/files/reports-pdf/PAS-16.pdf

When working with clients as a financial advisor, I found most people knew they had to save and invest for retirement, but had no idea of what kind of life they wanted in that retirement. Many thought they had years till retirement, but as the Great Recession of 2008 showed us, many people found themselves prematurely retired. And there are always those who never want to retire, but can’t know how realistic that desire will be. Most people are not planners. They are too immersed in the challenges of everyday life. That is why they need to work with someone who can help them create a vision for the life they want and a game plan for how to achieve it. This article does a good job describing some of the challenges in making this transition: https://www.nextavenue.org/retirement-bad-fit/?fbclid=IwAR1UdUgb6NadBZpIiZsSZuQF7Eorex0wVd6XHPf_i8Lt7Ea4-4PNpDq_BbQ. Rather than “retirement”, with its negative connotations, let’s call it the “What’s Next?” stage!

Since I retired in 2010, retirement coaching and heading up Encore Palm Beach County have filled my life. Yes, I still make time for my daily swim, fund with friends, attendance at plays, films, operas, dance performances, and a steady stream of books on my Kindle from the local library.

The real excitement is with Encore. In the course of providing workshops, Meetups and special events, my volunteer staff and I have met many people over 50 looking to be engaged with new work and volunteer opportunities. This has led Encore in many new directions and to many collaborations in the community. Encore’s focus on helping people find new work led me to add coaching and workshops on creating new work after 50. What we have discovered is that people are not successful in finding new work with online job boards. The algorithims used by them routinely screen out older workers. The personal connection is missing. I teach people the forgotten art of networking to find the hidden opportunities. In a county of 1.4 million people, 40% of whom are over 50, and more moving here every day, it is hard for people new to the area to have the personal connections that can lead to new work.

Thirty-Four years ago when I was contemplating a change of careers, I learned that the best way to find a new job was to network through personal contacts. I began with 5 people I knew and using certain information interviewing techniques, I was offered jobs in fields I never would have known about. Today we have LinkedIn, job boards and placement services. But my clients over 50 tell me that they send out hundreds of resumes, and respond to many job postings and never get a response. I work with them to figure out what they really have to offer in the way of skills and experiences and then help them develop an approach to find the work that’s right for them. Otherwise they are wasting their time trying to fit into other people’s boxes rather than creating their own box. Sometimes actually no box at all!

Recently Chris Farrell of Market Place Money spoke to the Encore event here in Delray Beach about how baby boomers are changing the way we think about work. In this article for Forbes magazine he confirms that the method I teach still is the most productive way of finding new work: https://www.forbes.com/sites/nextavenue/2017/04/10/the-problem-with-job-boards-for-older-job-seekers.

I have written before about the fact that creativity doesn’t decrease with age as long as one continues to use your mind in creative ways. This has been documented in various scientific studies, but a recent article in the New York Times by Pagan Kennedy, author of “Inventology, How We Dream Up Things That Change The World” she told of John Goodenough, 94, who has just filed a patent on a new kind of battery that could revolutionize electric cars. She cited studies that show that in the U.S. the highest value patents often come from the oldest inventors, over 55. While there is certainly plenty of creativity among the young, a study of Nobel physics laureates found that most made their discoveries after 50 and the peak of creativity for Nobel winners is getting higher age-wise every year. As Mr. Goodenough said “You have to draw on a fair amount of experience in order to be able to put ideas together.” When I work with retirement planning clients I remind them that they have the power to create what they want in their lives and to create new things using their life experiences. This is something people tend not to believe and need to be reminded of. To read the article in full: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/07/opinion/sunday/to-be-a-genius-think-like-a-94-year-old.html?

Over the past two years I have been going in several new directions. In addition to retirement planning, coaching and workshops, I created and copyrighted a program for a healthy approach to lifetime financial planning for people early in their careers and am preparing to launch it as an e-book. I am also exploring offering it to employers as a benefit for younger employees to help retain them. Retirement planning is more than savings and investing. It should be a plan to include the six key areas of life planning: career and work, health and wellness, family and relationships, leisure and social, personal development as well as finance and insurance. Finally, with a group of dedicated volunteers, we have created Encore Palm Beach County, a new nonprofit focused on helping people over 50 connect with new work, paid and volunteer. We have a new website: www.encorepbc.org. And we are sponsoring a great program on February 16 with Chris Farrell, Economics Editor of MarketPlace Money and author of “Unretirement: How Boomers are Changing How We View Work, Community, and the Good Life”, as speaker. Chris believes that our aging population has much to contribute economically to our society rather than being a drain on it, as many believe who paint pictures of financial doom and gloom. You can register to join us at www.encorepbc.org/event!

For the last several months, I have been chairing a committee interested in creating a new non-profit dedicated to helping the over-50 person create new careers, paid and unpaid, that have social impact. It will be called Encore Palm Beach County and the focus will be helping people discover their interests in making a difference and matching them with the needs of non-profit organizations in Palm Beach County. We have studied similar programs like this around the country, all of which are inspired by the Encore movement, “a movement to tap into the skills and experience of those in midlife and beyond to improve communities and the world”. This has been an outgrowth of my work with Create Your Best Retirement. We are in the initial stages, but hope over the next few years to develop funding and staffing. A long way to go yet, but exciting!

Everyone will face this decision eventually.  Some will have a mandatory retirement date, some will lose their jobs, some will have spouses who have already retired and want the other to retire also, and some will never retire.  But that’s not most people.  You can take tests online to estimate how long you will live.  You can uses various calculators to decide when to take Social Security.  And, of course, financial advisors can help you plan financially so you won’t run out of money, hopefully, before you die.  After spending the last 6 months talking with people about working with me to develop a retirement plan for how they want to live in retirement, it has become clear to me that people are still focused only on financial planning.  But they have it backwards.  Instead of plucking numbers out of the air, wouldn’t it be better to give some thought to how you want to live in retirement:  where you want to live, what activities you want to enjoy, how much travel you want to do, whether you want a new career or to develop a new skill, etc., and then put a number on what that scenario would require financially?  If you did, perhaps then, your financial advisor could do a better job of helping you create the resources needed.  Here is a good link to a recent article in Investment News that discusses the reality experienced by many of those already retired.