I'll retire when I'm dead
A note to all of you who wonder how long I can keep this up. WRITTEN & ILLUSTRATED by PETER MOORE, special to THE SATURDAY EVENING POST
When I was a baby journalist, The Saturday Evening Post was one of the revered names in the magazine business. It still is, only there is no more magazine business. Tant pis, they shrug, in France, about shit you can’t do anything about.
The Post actually played a big role in launching my journalism career which, as you’ll read below, I’m having a hard time leaving behind. Back in the day I interviewed for a job at a magazine called NEXT, which was all about the future. Ironic, seeing as it only lasted a couple years. The interview went fine, but the editor called a few days later to tell me that somebody else got the job.
Sigh.
The day after that, the editor called again saying, well, actually, that “somebody else” decided to go work for…wait for it…The Saturday Evening Post! I’ve felt grateful to that mighty institution ever since.
So it was a goes-around/comes-around moment when, several decades later, I pitched them on a piece about how I’d never retire. It’s so hard to stop writing, once you start!
So here I am, coming full circle back to the magazine that launched my career—when it hired somebody else. You never know where your big break will come from.
WE DROVE 1,700 MILES WEST to realize a dream: My wife and I wanted to live where we chose (Colorado), rather than at a random location (Pennsylvania) near a random office.
No problem with the getaway: After 20 years, I’d been laid off from a magazine job, and the severance package bankrolled us out the door. At age 60, I wasn’t done working, but now employment would have to follow me around rather than vice versa.
Ski country, ho!
But a disturbing pattern emerged as we met our new neighbors. During one exchange, a neighbor, eyeing my laugh lines and graying thatch, asked, “So, why did you move to Colorado?”
“Because we finally could!” I answered.
“Oh, so you’re retired!” was his response, but what I heard was, “Oh, so you’re useless and unemployable now!”
That’s when I pointed out — a little too insistently — my freelance gigs, my consultancies, and my continuing relevance in the workaday world. My neighbor’s eyes widened as he backed away: Dude, I only asked if you were retired.
Before the move, I had reported to various offices for many decades. I lived to work, was good at what I did, and craved the adrenaline rush that came from slaying deadlines. I just do it on my terms now.
But still the insinuations came, even when the insinuator had been corrected more than once. “No, really, you’re retired,” they’d insist. “These ‘jobs’ are just your hobbies.”
It made my hardworking head explode. But it wasn’t their fault. Retirement is usually considered a good thing. But clearly, I have a problem with the very idea of not working, so I resented people who couldn’t understand why I’d choose labor over leisure.
Here’s why: I blame my three Pilgrim relatives who set foot on Plymouth Rock on December 16, 1620. If any of them had retired early, my DNA would have been DOA. Instead, those Puritan ancestors carved a home out of the wilderness. Their survival adrenaline courses through my veins today.
But it’s not just self-preservation. I genuinely love to work. Why?
I love the sense of connectedness that it gives me with my fellow laborers.
I love a deadline, which is connected to the Pilgrims’ absolute necessity to lay aside provisions for winter. There’s motivation for you.
I love a sense of purpose, which beats aimless flailing.
And I love money. (Hey, at least I admit it.) It pays for ski passes.
Why would anybody stay on the job when they didn’t absolutely have to? Plenty of reasons.
For one, the sooner you start dipping into your savings, the sooner you exhaust them. Quit at 60 and live to 90, and your savings have to stretch for 30 years, like a single strand of hair covering a bald pate. It might make it to the other side, but it won’t look good. Work into your 70s, and there’s more money to spend in less time, which sounds like a party to me. And we’re living in the golden age of older workers. According to the Pew Research Center, only 11 percent of people 65 and over were working in 1987. Last year it was 19 percent, even after Walmart stopped hiring senior greeters.
Plus, if you delay taking your Social Security until after age 70, you’ll receive your maximum benefit every year until you die.
Soak Uncle Sam for all he’s worth!
You could also argue that even a smaller Social Security check buys a longer gap between your work life and the afterlife. Not necessarily. The National Bureau of Economic Research points out that retirement leads to declines in mobility and mental health and increases the likelihood of stroke and heart attack. Want to avoid cognitive decline? Avoid paycheck decline! What good is a gold watch if you can’t remember where you left it?
But let’s say you do retire in your early 60s — the average 60-year-old man can expect to live to age 84. Unless you’re rich in hobbies and social connections, you may end up staring at a blank wall. And then what use is your life and work experience?
Zero, to match your paycheck.
But if you do the quit-and-work pivot, you’ll have time to make a new kind of success for yourself, even if you’re planning to finish up relaxing on the beaches of Aruba.
My career stoppage came involuntarily. COVID killed off a cannabis magazine I had been hired to launch, so I went from assigning the March issue to, well, staring at a blank wall.
That’s when a friend suggested that I launch a newsletter on Substack. Instead of working for a publisher, he told me, I should become one. Suddenly I was pouring my skills and experience into petermoore.substack.com, and it was pouring new life into me.
Through my regular online posts, I established my credentials as a commentator and cartoonist, and soon I had regular gigs with NPR and The Colorado Sun.
Your results may vary on what kind of career pivot best suits you, but remember this: You have skills the world needs, and you probably won’t contribute them from your couch. My friend Gail went from school principal to ski-school teacher and loves every minute of it. Plus, she taught me how to carve through an aspen glade.
No, I’m not banking anywhere near the coin I was at the height of my career. But with our kids grown and gone, I don’t need a whopping paycheck. Instead, I’m banking something better: A new start, new skills, new colleagues — a whole new world. Plus, when my mountain-goat pal Mike agreed to climb Longs Peak with me on a weekday, I whistled out the door. It’s a rebirth for me.
So if you absolutely must quit that long-term job — and let’s face it, they’re not all great — take it as an invitation to apply your skills in a whole new way. It might work out. And the blank wall will still be there if you need something to stare at instead.
But there are more interesting vistas. Look toward your personal horizon and just go. You can retire when you die, and dodge all those annoying questions about it.
When anybody suggests I should quit working, they may as well suggest moving on from my true love. I’ve been hooked on employment, and my wife, for four decades now, and I’ll quit them only when death do us part.
No retirement party for me. I’m too busy.
"Working people have a lot of bad habits, but the worst of those is work." —Clarence Darrow
Are you disgusted with my approach to work, and want to talk me out of it? Tell me!
Do you want to press my nose to the grindstone, for your own selfish reasons? Subscribe!
Do you have somebody who needs to read this, either because they’re retired, or because they’re NOT retired?
Thanks for joining me here on the Road2Elsewhere. It beats working.
And your work makes my retirement so much more enjoyable. Not many people can make me laugh!
You're singing my song, Brother Unretired. Let me know when you're ready to write and illustrate your exciting memoirs. I'll give you deadline.