No Stupid Questions - 87. What’s So Great About Retirement?

Episode Date: February 20, 2022

How do you know when it’s the right time to retire? What does a “good” retirement look like? And will Stephen and Angela ever really hang up their hats?

Dogs really are the splendor of relationships. I'm Angela Duckworth. I'm Stephen Dubner. And you're listening to No Stupid Questions. Today on the show, what does a good retirement look like? I'm going to retire and I could travel. I could take up fly fishing. I could write a novel.

But not TV. Stephen, we have a letter from a Pat Tellyahan. Hi, Pat. Pat says, I am 65 years old and I'm having problems with the decision to retire. I like my current job and I'm concerned that my retirement experience won't be as rewarding as my current experience. It won't be, Pat. Well, we shall debate that. Most people I know in the workforce look forward to retirement, but I think there might be some like me who have concerns. Angie and I are just like you, Matt. Don't worry. Here's the last sentence. Can you offer guidance to us reluctant retirees about how to get off the fence. So in terms of can we offer guidance, Pat? Oh, yes, I feel we can offer guidance. So Pat is older than me, but I too have contemplated retirement. And then I moved violently in the opposite direction. Wait, you already contemplated

retirement? I did. I've been doing Freakonomics Radio for years and it is a real... It's a grind. A grind has such a negative connotation. I don't like to use that word, but it is a commitment. I'll say that. And there are different commitments as a writer. Like when you're in the middle of a book, for me, the feeling is always that your mind is never allowed really to be out of gear. It's never at rest. And you're always thinking about components of that big, big, big, big project. Now, Freakonomics Radio is different because it's a weekly thing, but there's always another one right around the corner.

And so there was a time when I was thinking, maybe it's time to acknowledge that I've been really fortunate to do work that I really like for a long time and it's been well received and I should stop now because I'm a little bit exhausted. And then you know what happened? There's a senator from Iowa whose name is Chuck Grassley. He's approximately 195 years old and yet he announced that he was running for reelection. And he was asked, why? You're old as dirt. Why are you doing that?

And if I recall correctly, his answer was something along the lines of, why not? I enjoy the work. It's important work. And what the heck else am I going to do? Right. What's better than this? When I read that, I thought, oh, my goodness, he's got 40 years on me. What am I even thinking about? Because I do love my work and whatever I would substitute for it is not going to be very satisfying. So, Pat, I have to tell you,

you're asking the wrong person here because I looked this right in the eye and I said, get away from me, retirement. But we have to acknowledge everyone's life is different, and everybody's work is different, and therefore everyone's retirement is different. So if we want to address this question for Pat, let's get some facts out of the way first. It is interesting to know, Angela, that in 2020, many more people retired than in prior years. And plainly, this is partly due to COVID. The great resignation. But I mean, this is retirement. This is the end. So 3.2 million people retired in 2020 compared to just one and a half million the year before.

What? We should also say 2019 was an aberrationally low year. The previous years, it was 2.2. But still, that's a million fewer retirees. So some of that is attributed to job losses due to COVID, but it does indicate that a lot of people were just maybe looking for a reason to stop. But here's what I found really interesting. The Rand Corporation did a study about retirement, and it found that fewer than 40% of American workers follow what's called the standard pattern of retiring directly and completely from a full-time job. In other words, I now work full-time, now I retire, and now I don't work at all. And they found that about

14% of respondents transition from full-time work to part-time work. About 17% leave the workforce and subsequently reenter. In other words, I thought retiring was a good idea. I have a brother who essentially did that years ago. He retired young. He had all these ideas about what his life would be like, what he would do with himself. And even though he did those things and it kind of worked, he just felt deeply unfulfilled. So he went back. Like Michael Jordan. Yeah. And then 26% remain in full or part-time jobs past the age of 70. And this RAND study also found that seniors who had better cognitive ability were more likely to follow the non-standard retirement pathways.

As opposed to retiring completely. Correct. So let's talk about cognitive decline in aging and how does that feed into our appetite to retire? If there is a relationship between declining mentally and retiring that's separate from aging, you don't know which is the horse and which is the cart. You don't know which is the horse and which is the cart. You don't know which is the cause. When I think of my dad, first of all, I talked about retiring all the time for years, actually, maybe decades. What was driving that conversation for all that time? So weird because he was so bound up with his work. As you know, he was a chemist

at DuPont and he thought about his work all the time. It was part and parcel of his identity. I mean, he was just really into being a DuPonter, as he called himself. Yet he would talk about retirement in this fantasizing way, like, oh, you know, when I retire, I'm going to do nothing. I'm just going to do absolutely nothing. That sounds so not like the kind of person that you've described to me, though. Did he really want to do nothing? Or do you think that was an overreaction to years of really hard work? Well, I don't know, because honestly, I was like, that's dumb. Why would you want to do nothing? You're going to be really unhappy. My dad was actually a great

scientist. So lots of people were eager for him to do part-time consulting. He said no to every single offer. And my dad then did decline mentally. We found out later that he had Parkinson's disease. And the question was, did retiring accelerate cognitive decline? Or did my dad have a sense that he was cognitively declining? And therefore, did that make him retire? Or maybe somewhere in the middle, which is he was experiencing some cognitive decline, which made his work less fulfilling slash rewarding slash successful. And he felt, oh, it's time because I'm not able to accomplish what I want to accomplish. Yeah, I think all stories are plausible and likely. I mean, I remember there was a time in his life where he was taking a little nap at the office in the afternoon. And I think Betty, the secretary, would close the door. And I know you're pro-nap, Stephen, but I'm not 100% sure that was the same kind of power napping that you do.

I'm not 100% sure that was the same kind of power napping that you do. And I think there could be some sort of like, oh, this is harder for me or I feel slower. I think also, though, and here's where we get into scientific research beyond the end of one of my dad. There is research on the effect of retirement on cognitive functioning. And I think there are mixed results. cognitive functioning. And I think there are mixed results. My read of this literature is that when you do the statistics right and you look to see about causality, there is evidence that retiring can have some causal effect on cognitive decline. I've read that research too, and I think mixed is a good word to use, although it probably comes down a little bit more on the side of yes, cognitive decline is probably magnified.

Not huge, by the way. You're not going to wake up with half a brain or something. Right. Not huge. One of the most famous studies, the data are derived from the U.S. Health and Retirement Study that comes out of the University of Michigan. I think for 30 years, every couple years, the project has surveyed 20,000 older Americans. And it's a very, very simple test having to do with remembering a sequence of words. And it finds that cognitive decline doesn't begin immediately after retiring. There's like a honeymoon period of about 14 months, but then after a while, there is less recall. But again, that's a hard connection to establish foolproof. So getting back to Pat's question about himself and whether it seems like a good idea, maybe what we should do is try to

make a more general list for Pat and anyone else of upsides and downsides of retirement. And then it's up to you, Pat. We're not making your choices for you, Pat. So what would you put as upsides of retirement? I do know people who retire in order to take care of grandchildren. Okay. I know this sociology professor whom I adore. His name is Dan Chambliss. I grieved when he retired.

I was like, what? You can't retire? He's emeritus at Hamilton College. He's famously awesome. All the students love him. And he does such great academic work. I caught up with him recently, and it turns out he partly was motivated to retire because of his first grandchild. And I was like, oh, okay, that sounds pretty good. So on the plus side ledger. Spend time with people you love, let's say. Yeah. That's a big one. Now,

how long has he been retired? Maybe a year or so. So he's not quite through the honeymoon period. He might wake up a year and a day after and say, oh, God, I'm bored. If I see another Lego again in the next year, I'm going to shoot myself. But at least for now. He's pretty happy. But I mean, yeah, you spend time with people you love. You have more

time to do things you want to do plainly that you weren't able to do when you were working so hard. You can travel and have all sorts of new opportunities. You can agree these are potential upsides. I need to tell you, my sister, who's not a lot older than me, retired very recently. And guess what? She's literally traveling right now. Your sister, who is a physician, correct? Yeah, she is a reproductive endocrinologist. The question is what she will do next. My guess is that Annette's going to do something that's probably actually, I think it's going to be related to reproductive endocrinology. I got a letter the other day from a doctor of mine who announced that he was closing his practice.

And it didn't say why. It said, here's who I suggest you go see afterwards. And I love this doctor. He's a great doctor. And we've become pretty friendly. And my immediate response was deep sadness because I was sure that he was really sick and dying and was shutting down his practice because of that. You went dark really fast there, Stephen. I went dark fast because he's probably early 60s, but so doesn't seem old in any way. And you were like, that's the only reason why he'd be retiring. That's exactly what I thought.

I thought being a physician is so, I know it's difficult, but so rewarding in so many ways. And I just thought there's no way he's voluntarily shutting it down. So I wrote back to him immediately and I said something like, I hope everything is okay. Please let me know if there's anything I can do. And he said, everything is great. I'm retiring. And I wrote back to say, but aren't you extraordinarily young and kind of at the top of your game? He said, well, that's nice of you to say. I'm not quite as young as you think, but this is a plan that my wife and I have had in place for like 40 years. Their kids are grown and they are ready for a new chapter. And I took great joy in that retirement because it's a positive plan being executed. Hopefully he'll be as happy as he thinks.

Well, what's he going to do? I don't know what he's going to do other than the fact that he's an organized person who's interested in many things in the world, which is one reason we became very friendly. And so I have no doubt that he will put himself to good use. I guess you could also put on the like, why retire side of the ledger, if you're retiring from something that was soul killing or just stressful or tedious. Or even if it was a good career and job, even if it was rewarding, work can be hard and stressful. job, even if it was rewarding, work can be hard and stressful. And maybe we should consider one upside is that you get to recuperate from the grind. I think that was my dad's motivation,

by the way. I think it was a cry for help, Stephen. It was like, wow, my job is really stressful and hard. And I think that also was the reason why he wanted to, quote unquote, do nothing. Okay. But when we talk about doing nothing, let's flip to the downsides. That's where you and I are. That's where we are spiritually. Let's not ignore a really obvious one. Financially, it could be very tough, especially because the data show that most of us are not only bad at predicting our own future generally, but we're quite bad at predicting our financial futures. OK, so let's assume that we're probably under predicting how much money we really need.

Well, the theory goes that your costs diminish because you own your home. You're not raising kids anymore, probably. But a lot of those are truisms that aren't very true, because first of all, sometimes you don't own your home. Sometimes you're supporting other people in your family. And then medical care. That's a big one, especially in this country. Here's another big one that people don't think about. When people are saving for retirement, they tend to invest in the markets fairly aggressively. They hold a lot of equities

and not very many bonds. But then once they retire, they want to preserve capital. And then they downshift to a lower risk portfolio, which returns less. And all of a sudden, you're not earning as much from your retirement portfolio. But additionally, you're not getting anything from your work. And I would argue that the financial change of not earning money is maybe matched by the psychic problem. It's really hard to adjust to the feeling of drawing down your money rather than contributing or saving. Right. So that's one potential downside. I did see a little piece of evidence. This is from Norma Coe. She's a professor of medical ethics and health policy at Penn, but I believe she's an economist

by training. She has studied retirement. And I'm reading here from a segment of Freakonomics MD, one of our sister shows. It's hosted by Bapu Jenna. It says, if you look at time use survey data, a lot of American men upon retirement watch TV and watch a lot more TV than they did prior. That was my dad. Oh, really? Oh my God. He watched so much TV after he retired. He watched like the Weather Channel. Okay. But here's the thing, just so you know, from Norma Coe, women are more likely to do things

like increase their volunteering and do more household work and increase both physical and cognitive activities. That was my mom, by the way. So their retirements were not parallel. both physical and cognitive activities. That was my mom, by the way. So their retirements were not parallel. It sounds like there's a good possibility, at least for a man, that as much as you think you will do a lot of new exciting stuff, you may just watch a lot of TV.

You might just be binging on Netflix. Like, I'm going to retire and I could travel. I could take up fly fishing. I could write a novel. But not TV. Still to come on No Stupid Questions, Stephen and Angela discuss the factors that contribute to aging well. I do not walk around the house muttering,

someday I'm going to do nothing. I walk around the house thinking, someday I hope to do something. someday I hope to do something. Before we return to Stephen and Angela's conversation about retirement, let's hear some of your thoughts on the topic. We asked listeners to send us voice memos about their ideal retirement scenario. Here's what you said. I think true retirement and sipping margaritas on the beach would get boring after a week. My plan is to retire from a career in accounting and become a history teacher.

It would be mentally stimulating and I'd get summers off. A while ago, my stepdad pulled me aside and he explained that he was unhappy at work and that he was thinking about retiring. And I said, well, what are you going to do? And he was like, I don't know, read a book on the couch. And I said, that's not a plan for retirement. That's a plan for a vacation because I really think that retirement is an opportunity for something new to begin. I want to be looking forward to something. So I'm thinking that after I've done my PhD in biochemistry and been a professor for a while in my optimistic future world, I'm going to go get an economics PhD or like a botany degree, or maybe I'll become a choir director. I don't future world, I'm going to go get an economics PhD or like a botany

degree, or maybe I'll become a choir director. I don't know, but I'm really excited about what the future holds. The last two years have been such a grind that I thought I might retire when I turned 65 in the fall. Instead, some former colleagues contacted me about a new venture they had and asked if I might be interested in helping them build out the apartment in my specialty. So far, so good. I'm having a blast. And who knows when I'll ever retire. That was, respectively, listener Cameron, listener Kate, and listener Jay Kirschbaum. Thanks to them and to everyone who shared their responses with us. Now, back to Stephen and Angela's conversation about how to decide whether it's time to retire.

Let's get to the psychology of retirement and the motivational dimension. The motivational piece for me is this. I have a theory of happiness, which is very simple. I think people pursue goals spontaneously at every age. Whether you're four or 84, you have goals. You have things that you want to accomplish. I think actually the greatest unhappiness there is, is not to have goals at all. And when I watched my dad get up in the morning, have his coffee and his breakfast, shuffle over to the love seat,

sit down, take the remote control, turn on the weather channel. I was thinking to myself like, this is so much worse than having a job to do and having that lack of purpose. You know, he wasn't needed. I think it was a real bummer for him. And I think it's a real bummer for anyone. There are lots it's a real bummer for anyone. There are lots of stories of people retiring and then getting more involved in their church or their community. That's my mother-in-law, by the way. My mother-in-law retired from being a school superintendent and has kind of thrown herself into the overbrook Presbyterian church community. And it's very purposeful. A lot of people depend on her. But I think in a way,

the mistake my dad made, like, I'm going to do nothing. I'm going to have no pressure. That's not how human nature works. People aren't happy when they're doing nothing. My guess is that the quality of your retirement is strongly correlated with the quality of your life up to that point. Oh, research shows that's generally true. And especially the decisions and behaviors you've been making all along. I do know a little bit about the work of the psychologist George Valiant. I'm sure you know much more. I love George.

So George wrote about aging well. That was the name of the book. How would you characterize George Valiant's idea of aging well? What does that include and not include? So much of his professional life, he was a psychiatrist at Harvard. I think he's emeritus now. He followed this cohort of several hundred people. Many of them were Harvard graduates, but there was also a sample of

Boston residents who are not Harvard graduates. How dare they live in Boston not having graduated from Harvard? You could take it up with the organizers, except for this. This is like one of the longest longitudinal studies ever. And the people who started the study are not alive anymore. Even the subjects of the study who started off in their teens, most of them, I think, have passed. So this is a study where you can follow people for an entire life and you can ask, what's a good life? What are the secrets to aging well? And that's the book that George wrote. But what George discovered was, first of all, that relationships, like healthy relationships. One should avoid relationships, you're saying.

Like the plague. One should go through life as alone as possible. Is that what leads to good aging? No, no, Stephen. Quite the contrary. You know, if there's one way to age well, it's really substantive, mutual, trusting, high vulnerability relationships. What about a pet? Oh, Fifi, your dog? Well, I don't mean my pet necessarily, but if love and companionship are so important, and a lot of people as they get older, they don't have that deep bond with another human. They just don't,

for whatever reason. There's divorce, there's death, there's estrangement. And especially with COVID, it's been so difficult for so many people, so much social isolation. And I'm curious to know to what degree a pet can fulfill that role as one ages. I think this is a great research question. I'm sure there's research I don't know about, but let me just give you my hypothesis. I absolutely think it's possible. And I say that without mocking. I'm just like, holy smokes. It's possible to truly love an animal.

See, for those of us who do live with dogs and love dogs, when I hear you say that, I'm thinking I need to switch some words in the sentence because we would think, is it truly For those of us who do live with dogs and love dogs, when I hear you say that, I'm thinking I need to switch some words in the sentence because we would think, is it truly possible to love and bond with another human? Because they're much more difficult. The animals, I think, are easier. I really think it's like Splenda. All the sweetness without the calories.

Dogs really are the Splenda of relationships. I think also what's interesting about pets is it's an asymmetric relationship, right? You pick up their shit, you take them to the vet, you feed them. Oh, asymmetric in that direction. I was thinking it was asymmetric in the other direction. And then what does Fifi do for you, Stephen? Oh, so much companionship and warmth. But also, I would argue that the taking care of the dog actually provides me some benefit, too. That's what I think. We sometimes talk, you and I, about Maslow and Rogers. These were the humanist psychologists. And one of the things that the humanist psychologists

emphasize is that every person has a need for someone else in their life to have unconditional positive regard for them. And sometimes it ends up being your therapist, but it could be parental. But if it's your guinea pig, that's what you go with, you're saying. Well, this is the thing. Pets are really great, especially dogs, I think, of unconditional positive regard. It's not qualified.

They're not critical. They're just so excited to have you around. But that's one thing that I think a Fifi provides somebody. And then the other thing is maybe even more important, which is that you get to take care of Fifi. And this is the thing about retiring. People need to be needed. Maybe when you get a pet, you get something that depends on you. I mean, it doesn't make much sense to an economist, maybe, but it makes a lot of sense to a psychologist. That's a really good point. I do want to go back to George Valiant's

work about aging well. Here's what he says are seven factors that do predict positive aging. Not being a smoker or having stopped smoking young, adaptive coping style, mature defenses, absence of alcohol abuse, healthy weight. Those are physiological and potentially cognitive drivers that would make a retirement better. But then, here we go, stable marriage, as you referred to, exercise, and years of education. So when I read that list of George Valiant's seven factors that do predict positive aging, it makes me think that the question of retirement or aging generally for Pat or you or me is really nothing more than a continuation of everything that we talk about on this show, about how every decision we make, every behavior we take up

is a trade-off to some degree. If you want to think about it in economic terms, there's some utility, there's some benefit, there's some joy, and there's some cost to it. And that if you're thinking about retirement, you probably need to be extraordinarily honest with yourself. And probably the biggest mistake would be to think that whatever problems I had before will be gone and whatever joy I was getting from my work and career will still be present. I do think you could imagine the question being, is healthy aging something that starts when you retire? Or does aging well depend on making healthy choices in your 20s, 30s, 40s,

your whole life? And I think that could be the moral of the story is that you can't just decide to start aging well. And actually, that's what my dad did. You know, by the way, my dad didn't exercise. He didn't do any of these things that you're really supposed to do. He didn't keep up positive relationships with friends. He wasn't doing a lot of things

that would have enabled him to have a healthier retirement. So Angie, will you ever want to retire? Am I going to die with my boots on? I have a feeling the answer to that is yes. Based on this conversation, I don't see you as ever wanting to not only stop doing what you're doing, but even diminish the intensity very much. I personally have no plans to retire. You know, when Tim Beck died, he was 100. And he was, as you know, Stephen, a pioneer in cognitive therapy. And he was working on his magnum opus. And he literally would send me emails where the subject was magnum opus. Wow. And so in a sense,

he was the opposite of retired. He was trying to do his most important life's work. So unlike my dad, I do not walk around the house muttering, someday I'm going to do nothing. I walk around the house thinking, someday I hope to do something. So if we were to summarize, we'd say that Pat's question about how to get off the fence is hard to answer for any individual because it's plainly an individual choice with all these inputs and outputs and a lot of individual differences, both in the work you've been doing and in the life you're going to. So it's really hard to say. Also, we're pretty poor at predicting how retirement will treat us and maybe how

we'll treat retirement. Let me ask you one last question, though, Angela. Given the evidence, albeit mixed, for cognitive decline from retirement, or at least from aging, and given what I believe is good evidence for cognitive activity and inspiration while doing a certain kind of work, which is essentially cognitive work, would you suggest that not retiring is therefore an effective defense against cognitive decline? 100%. Five words, use it or lose it. That's the brain. So if you're going to retire, use it in a different way. But I saw it happen in my own house. And I think for anybody who wants to not only live longer, but really be alive longer, like it is use it or lose it. And so if retiring means changing tracks, maybe all the better. But I don't think retiring in the sense of doing less or doing nothing, as my dad said, I don't think that's a great idea. a great idea. Angie, I'll tell you, if you and I can keep doing this every week, I am never retiring.

I am going out of here in a box. No Stupid Questions is produced by me, Rebecca Lee Douglas. And now here's a fact check of today's conversation. In the first half of the show, Stephen tells the story of how Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley's run for re-election inspired him to reject retirement. And he jokes that Grassley is 195 years old. In actuality, the Republican senator is 88 years old, 30 years Stephen's senior. Grassley has served seven terms since he was first elected to the Senate in 1980, and he'll begin his eighth term if he wins re-election in 2022. However, he's not the oldest living senator to seek re-election. California Democrat Dianne Feinstein recently filed paperwork to run for re-election in 2024, and she's three months older than Grassley. Later, Angela says that she thinks George Valiant,

author of the 2002 book Aging Well, is a professor emeritus at Harvard Medical School. But Valiant, age 87, is still a full professor of psychiatry. Like Angela, Chuck Grassley, and Dianne Feinstein, it appears that Valiant is prepared to die with his boots on. It appears that Valiant is prepared to die with his boots on. Finally, Angela says she's unaware of research on how pet ownership affects aging. It's actually quite a fertile field of study. According to a recent poll conducted by the University of Michigan Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation, more than 70% of pet owners age 50 to 80 reported that their pet helps them to cope with physical and emotional symptoms.

Researchers explained that pets can provide older adults with a sense of being needed and loved, and activity through dog walking and other aspects of pet care could be beneficial to general well-being. But they also noted an inherent risk of pet ownership. 6% of those surveyed said that they had fallen or injured themselves due to a pet. In addition, researchers noted that loss of a pet could provide a psychological blow to older individuals. That's it for the Fact Check. Coming up next week on No Stupid Questions, what's more important, fixing yourself or fixing society?

I visited these two women. One had Alzheimer's and literally forgot me every time. The other one was dying of liver cancer. I just picked the community service activity that would be like the most depressing. That's next week on No Stupid Questions. If you'd like to share your thoughts on the topic, email a voice memo to nsq at freakonomics.com with the subject line, self-improvement.

Tell us whether it's more important to you to optimize yourself or optimize the world, and why. Make sure to record someplace quiet, and please keep your thoughts to under a minute. Maybe we'll include them on the show. Maybe we'll include them on the show. No Stupid Questions is produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio and is part of the Freakonomics Radio Network, which also includes Freakonomics Radio, People I Mostly Admire, and Freakonomics MD.

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