Retirement Planning Makes Singles’ Golden Years Shine
The pattern is familiar: After 40 or so years of 9-to-5, a worker retires with a gold watch and happy visions of long, leisurely days ahead. But within months he has puttered himself into a state of bored anxiety and all the togetherness is making his homemaker wife climb the draperies.
But that pattern is being altered, and one of the significant changes in this era in which being single is a socially acceptable life style is the increasing possibility of retiring alone.
And that, pre-retirement specialist Judy Salwen said, is a possibility that presents challenges and opportunities not experienced by the traditional couple-in-retirement. Salwen, in counseling singles between 45 and 64, begins by telling them to “discard the concept that alone means lonely.”
There is a huge pre-retirement population that is alone--statistics show one in five are widowed or divorced or never married. That is 14.3 million single Americans.
A successful and rewarding retirement takes planning, Salwen said, both financial planning and, for singles, planning to meet emotional needs, which may include the absence of adult children and other family bonds and the necessity of making decisions alone.
These needs are addressed by Salwen, executive director of New York-based Retirement Planning Services, in seminars presented throughout the country for single employees of corporate giants and in her book, “Solo Retirement: How To Make the Prime of Your Life the Time of Your Life,” which is the text for seminar students.
Salwen was interviewed after she conducted a daylong session Saturday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center primarily for the center’s single employees.
A former early childhood education specialist at the City University of New York who describes herself as “in my 50s,” Salwen became intrigued with the challenges of solo retirement when, 12 years ago, she found herself going it alone as a divorced woman after 24 years of marriage.
She is convinced that, as a rule, “If you have lived a creative, full life then you’ll have a creative retirement. If you’ve led an uninspiring, trivial life, you bring this to your retirement.”
But, she said, “I hope to be able to move people along. This quarter of your life is as important as any other.”
Salwen scanned her audience, which was for the most part women at mid-life or older, and said matter-of-factly, projecting a chart onto a large screen, “Here’s how many years are left to you, on the average. I hope you do a good job with them.”
For the average 50-year-old man, the chart, which was provided by the National Center for Health Statistics, projects an additional 25 years; for the average woman of that age, an additional 30.9 years. The average man who is 70 may expect to live 11.5 more years, while the 70-year-old woman has 15.1 years ahead.
To her, “doing a good job” means more than survival. It means coping successfully when the security, status and recognition that go with a job are yanked out from underneath one, together with the built-in fellowship and socialization--”somebody to have lunch with,” as Salwen put it.
She is equally concerned that the retiree keep physically fit--”If your health is not working for you, you’re not going to enjoy retirement”--and, as a single, “there’s not somebody to help you” or to make certain that medical appointments are made and kept.
When Salwen asked for suggestions from participants on keeping healthy, both mentally and physically, Virginia Bohannon raised her hand: “Become involved in something. . . . For me, it’s handicapping horses.” There were good-natured titters as Bohannon explained that she’d been doing it for six years and still considers herself “a sophomore. Each race is a new challenge.”
Salwen said studies show that people who have always been single tend to be “in very good shape” financially and creatively when they retire--even though socializing may be a little tougher--whereas their divorced or widowed counterparts generally have “a bumpier time.”
Fighting Depression
Nevertheless, she said, the newly retired can “expect a certain amount of depression” after an initial carefree period that is “absolutely sensational.”
Above all, Salwen said, what is needed is a determination to “keep growing,” to expose oneself to new ideas and to making new friends. “There is nothing worse than a bore.”
It was apparent that this particular group had already been giving some thought to filling their post-retirement days. They spoke of their desires to have a garden, to travel, to take up a hobby. “Do any of you want to relocate?” Salwen asked, and there was a resounding “yes” from the participants. One spoke of going back to school; another said, “I want to make my mark. . . . I would like to do something before I leave.”
Salwen stressed the importance of making rational, well-planned moves. Moving is costly, she said, in financial and emotional terms and no one should leap without first spending some time in an area and checking out its social and cultural life, medical facilities and public transportation.
Singles can expect to spend one-third of their income on housing, Salwen said. She mentioned that, for those for whom cost is a major consideration, Florida and Arizona are no longer top choices. The most economical place for retirees today? Utah. There are also good values in retirement housing, she said, in Louisiana, South Carolina, Nevada, Texas, New Mexico, Alabama and Georgia.
One woman said she intended to head straight for Leisure World in Laguna Hills. But Salwen urged that everyone consider a mixed-age community--”You don’t want to hear the ambulance coming by very regularly.” Beyond that, she said, living in a place that is “totally homogeneous” tends to make one stop feeling a part of life.
Now is the time to start financial planning for retirement, Salwen told the group. That means computing projected income from pensions, Social Security, annuities, dividends, real estate holdings, veteran’s benefits, disability payments--and, yes, second careers.
“Leisure can produce income,” said Salwen, pointing to retirees who have taken the bite out of inflation by converting a love for cooking into a small catering business, a passion for gardening into a landscape consulting service.
Obviously, she said, some retirees will be hesitant to plunge into their own enterprises. She said there is a demand for the mature worker in service industries--schools, theaters, department stores, hotels and motels.
Financial Planning
She includes a session on financial planning in each of her seminars. In this case, the presenter was Marlane R. Marsh, a single, personal financial planner with American Pacific Securities Corp. in Pasadena. Marsh said that, to a large extent, childhood influences about money determine habits in the years ahead and “to go from a savings perspective into an investment perspective can be very traumatic” in the later years.
While suggesting investment alternatives such as mutual funds, Marsh stressed the importance of keeping adequate cash reserves, equal to two to three times the retiree’s monthly expenses, for “when the refrigerator breaks down, the car stops and everything mechanical in the house stops working at once.”
Carey Donnelly, a Hollywood-based Social Security Administration field representative, was on hand with good news for those contemplating retirement: Social Security is not going broke; indeed, he said, it is fully financed through 2060. Then he asked, “Anybody worried past 2060?”
Donnelly said he wanted to debunk a few Social Security “myths,” such as the one that the recent funding crunch was the result of spending money paid in to Social Security for programs such as welfare. The cause of the financial troubles, Donnelly said, are twofold: Inflation, coupled with the fact that people are living longer.
He noted that a white male who turned 65 in 1950 had an average life expectancy of 10.9 more years; by 1985, that had jumped to 13.9 more years. As for inflation, Donnelly said, the maximum monthly Social Security benefit check for the person who turned 65 in 1970 was $189.80; this year it will be $760. The big jump came after 1971, he said, and “we were not prepared for 9, 10, 11, 12, 18% inflation” with accompanying cost-of-living increases.
A third factor contributing to the problems, he said, was unemployment, which soared to 11.9% before leveling off at today’s 7%, up from a high of 6% between 1940, the year Social Security began paying benefits, and 1971. “If you don’t work, you don’t pay (in),” Donnelly said, and each 1% on the unemployment charts means a loss to Social Security of $1.5 billion a year.
But there is cause for optimism, he said: The all-time low birth rate between 1930-45 means that there will be fewer people reaching 65 in the 1990s when the baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1963, will be in their prime earning years.
“That means surpluses, folks,” Donnelly said, “and I’m talking trillions (of dollars).”
Getting Papers in Order
Salwen advises pre-retirees, “You have to get yourselves legally ready for retirement.” That, she said, includes updating one’s will and designating a power of attorney. And, she said, suggesting that marriage may be on the horizon for many after retirement, “A prenuptial agreement is something you might want to look into.”
Equally important, she said, is preparing a letter of instruction for survivors, dealing with matters not covered in a will such as what is to be done with a car.
Holly Hutchins, a Fullerton attorney specializing in estate planning, probate, wills and real estate law, suggested some money-saving strategies such as setting up a living trust and naming a conservator. “If you have a stroke tomorrow or get hit by a car, someone can go on paying your bills,” she said.
On a single’s checklist of legal musts, she mentioned too the desirability of having a durable power of attorney--someone designated to make medical decisions if the attending physician determines the patient is unable to do so. It is important, Hutchins said, that the person know “what your feelings are (re) life-support systems” and “whether you want to donate your organs.”
Herbert Dreilinger, a widowed retiree who lives in Reseda, had not been included on the program to talk about wills or money. Rather, his part dealt with day-to-day living. “You have to be lucky,” he said, “but you have to keep putting your toe in the water. Those people who sit at home and think about themselves are boring people.”
He is a volunteer counselor for three social agencies, a job, he said, that does not require genius. “Most people just need a shoulder.”
Wherever Salwen goes to speak on retirement planning--and she has spoken to employees of General Foods, Consolidated Edison, Chemical Bank, Harvard University, M.I.T. and the Federal Reserve Bank, among others--she finds “the most important concern always is money, knowing they have enough to live on. After that, it’s a place to live.” The third most frequently voiced concern is about second careers.
There are some gender differences, she has found. “Women, after they’re satisfied they’ve handled the money aspects, will focus on socialization. Men are worried about people talking about them as being gay or strange if they find male friends.”
One of the positive changes for the contemporary retiring generation, Salwen said, is society’s attitude that it’s OK to be old, and it’s OK to be single.
