This Is the Secret to a Good Retirement, According to an Anthropologist Who Interviewed 100 Seniors
If you’re only worrying about your finances, you may be missing the most important ingredient for a good retirement.
by Jessica Stillman
Ask people if they’re on track for a good retirement, and many will immediately start talking about their finances. Do they save enough? Have they diversified their portfolio properly? What will happen if they experience some unexpected crisis?
All of these are worthy questions, of course. But according to a new study out of Japan, saving enough to enjoy your golden years is only the first step to a good retirement. If you really want to feel happy and fulfilled after you step back from work, another ingredient is key, according to in-depth interviews with more than 100 Japanese seniors.
A different view of the good retirement
When many people want retirement advice, they go see a financial planner. But Shiori Shakuto, a lecturer at the University of Sydney, is an anthropologist, not a number cruncher. So when she wanted to learn about what separated those who thrived in retirement from those who struggled, she took a different approach.
For her research, Shakuto conducted in-depth interviews with more than 100 male and female Japanese seniors. Their stories, which she recently wrote up on The Conversation, are in many ways specific to the work culture and social structure of Japan. But the overall lessons Shakuto uncovered can apply to anyone, anywhere hoping to make a smooth transition out of full-time work.
Why Japanese salarymen often struggle in retirement
Japan has long been known worldwide for its demanding work culture. White-collar professionals in the country (who were traditionally overwhelmingly male) are often required to work extremely long hours, which leaves many families relying on stay-at-home mothers to do much of the work of child-rearing and community engagement. This means men often don’t end up spending much time with their families.
How did that affect them when it came time to retire? In short, not well at all.
“Through decades of excessive hours spent at work away from home, the rest of the family established a routine that did not include him. Taking up new hobbies at the age of 60 was not as easy as he thought, nor was making new friends at this age,” Shakuto writes of one such man.
He was not alone. The retirement of many former salarymen was “characterized by boredom—having nowhere to go to or having nothing to do. The sense of boredom led to a sense of isolation and low confidence in old age,” she reports.
Their wives, on the other hand, maintained strong ties to their kids and community. Many had hobbies, volunteer roles, and friends. “They could accelerate these involvements in their old age,” Shakuto found. The results were positive.
“The sense of connection with family and communities, not to mention their husbands’ reliance on them, led to a high confidence and wellbeing among older women,” she wrote.
The lesson for the rest of us
All of which makes for interesting anthropology, but you could be forgiven for asking: What does all this have to do with me if I don’t live in Japan?
The lesson Shakuto takes from her many conversations with Japanese seniors is that the key to a good retirement is a healthy work-life balance during your career. Cultivating interests and relationships in mid-life gives you the tools you need to enjoy life after full-time work. There is every reason to believe that lesson is fairly universal.
When European researchers recently studied successful entrepreneurs who stepped back from work, they didn’t discover a group of happy golfers and ski bums. Instead, many of these financially secure retirees flailed.
They struggled with “finding new identities and directions in life and dealing with negative emotions. As few friends or family members are likely to be in similar situations, it is easy to feel a sense of isolation. Interviewees reported struggling to find meaning in their new lives, and difficulties in deciding on engaging and meaningful ways to fill up their days,” the researchers reported on Insead Knowledge.
In a similar vein, anecdotal reports say many adherents of the FIRE movement (for “financial independence retire early”) actually return to work again after their much-longed for early retirements. They often experience the same trouble—in retirement, they had plenty of money but nothing to do to give their lives meaning.
Money is only one ingredient of a good retirement.
All of these studies offer the same warning to entrepreneurs obsessively checking their investment accounts to see if they’ll be able to retire well. Finances are most definitely important. Poverty and precarity don’t make for pleasant golden years.
But if you’re sacrificing everything else in your life—family ties, friendships, community engagement, outside passions—in service of running up your savings, you’ll likely stop work only to find you have nothing meaningful to fill your days.
Take a warning from the older gentleman who told Shakuto he felt like a “nureochiba.” What is nureochiba? Those wet fallen leaves that stick around getting in people’s way and clogging up drains. That’s no one’s vision of post-work happiness.
In short, the secret ingredient to a good retirement isn’t oodles of money, though that helps. But if you don’t want to end up feeling like a directionless burden, it’s important to maintain a full and fulfilling life outside work before you retire.