‘Starting older’: Why we need a new word for retirement

For some, the moment just arrives. “I’m done with all this” is how Judith Venables remembers her decision to retire from a productive career that included, at one stage, being a zookeeper. At 61, she was suddenly ready to leave her role in children’s welfare. “I just jumped ship,” she says.

Their experience is typical in Australia, where we tend to peg the “right” time to retire on the age at which we qualify for a pension – currently 67 for those born on or after January 1, 1957. Yet official retirement ages differ greatly around the world. It’s possible to retire at 50 in China and in Cameroon though most countries with a pension offer retirement between 62 and 65; it’s now 66 in Britain.

There have been exceptions. In ancient China, officials in the Zhou dynasty retired at 70; later, a word was coined meaning “retire” , and there is evidence the officials could then expect up to 15 years of leisure, reading books and writing poetry .

‘There is nowhere to hide from your fears and uncertainties when your brain is no longer engaged with spreadsheets, annual leave and lost socks. What is the purpose of a “full life”?’“There are myriad activities to explore, causes to support and new skills to learn, so my ‘do-list’ grows daily,” says Jennifer Ebdon, who loves her seasonal job helping passengers on and off cruise ships at Melbourne’s Station Pier.

As for the superstition that retirement could negatively affect your mortality, Daly noted two studies that found no connection between retirement and how soon you’re likely to kick the bucket; in fact, the Norway study suggested early retirement might be good for men’s health. “Despite contradictory findings,” Daly concluded, “the majority of researchers agree that it is not necessarily retirement, per se, that affects health, wellbeing and mortality.

We inevitably lose some mental acuity as we age, particularly in the prefrontal cortex, which controls executive functioning, attention and working memory – and is therefore probably responsible for those forgetful “senior moments”. Offsetting this agility loss is what’s called crystalline intelligence, accumulated knowledge that is also useful in real-time problem-solving. Another study, from 2022, suggests this characteristic “OK, yes, a big part of the retirement decision is about the money.

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