Are You A Failure if You Can't Retire?

(MoneyWatch)  If you're like most Americans, you've probably taken the following beliefs to heart: Retirement is the right way to complete your life. You're being cheated out of life if you can't retire. Or worse yet, you're a failure if you can't retire. These are powerful messages sent by our society and in advertising from the financial industry.

But are these messages right for us?

First, we've got to understand that these days, the traditional retirement, defined as "not working," is out of reach for most older Americans (see my previous blog post, Can't Retire Yet? Don't Despair, for more on this). But we also have to remember that until a few generations ago, most people in industrialized societies worked until a few years before they died. In fact, that's still the case for most people around the world today. The parents of baby boomers were the first generation to have an extended period of "not working" at the end of their lives. So when you step back a little, it's hard to view the traditional retirement as an entitlement--or even as "traditional."

My previous blog post, Does Working Longer Increase Your Lifespan?, described fascinating evidence which suggests that working may increase your longevity. That same study showed that people aged 50 to 70 with incomes over the poverty level had significantly lower death rates than people with incomes under the poverty level. Maybe working a little in your later years to make ends meet isn't such a bad idea after all!

Do you believe that "Work is bad, and you should retire as soon as possible"? That's another questionable yet prevalent message. I believe that the need to be productive and useful to our communities is hardwired into us. It's not too hard to imagine that for most of human history, the most energetic, productive, and hard-working people have been the very ancestors who survived to pass along their genes to us.

Does this mean we shouldn't save and plan for retirement? NO! Having sufficient financial resources enables you to be in control of your life. As a result, you can choose the right kind--and amount--of work for you, or potentially choose not to work at all.

I believe that we'll return to the retirement of our grandparents' day, when they continued working and being productive throughout most of their later years. Full retirement didn't come until they were unable to work at all, due to health reasons, and they only retired for a relatively short period, from five to ten years. This type of retirement is much more practical and feasible for baby boomers, given their inadequate financial resources and all the other trends documented in my blog post Can't Retire Yet? Don't Despair.

I don't believe retirement is a dumb idea; everybody should plan for their retirement years. But the baby boomers will need to plan for a different kind of retirement than their parents' retirement.

Why do you want to retire? It's a good question to ask yourself as you plan to have the best rest-of-life. And I'd like to hear your answers--let's explore this theme in future posts.

Image from iStockphoto contributor Lisay