This week there is absolutely zero chance of avoiding retirement news, plus we’re talking obsessive self-optimization, loneliness in the front- and back-end of life, The Idea of You and middle-aged women, and how boomers are reinventing the golden years…for the better, I hope.
Fast-growing Florida retirement haven is luring business away from Wall Street (NY Post)
Watch out, NYC. Boca Raton is coming to eat your lunch, except it’s not lunch, it’s an early bird dinner at 4:30. Seriously, this all tracks. As we’ve been seeing, younger generations are declining the rock and roll lifestyle for a more geriatric version, not just through their hobbies and pace of life, but also where they live. Whether it be a private golf community or a once-silver-haired city. It’s a slippery slope (with handrails!) to a retirement community so brands and companies should be monitoring this transitional life stage and newfound fondness for the silver life.
The Loneliness Curve (NYT)
“In a study published last Tuesday in the journal Psychological Science, researchers found that loneliness follows a U-shaped curve: Starting from young adulthood, self-reported loneliness tends to decline as people approach midlife only to rise again after the age of 60, becoming especially pronounced by around age 80.” What both of these groups have in common: feeling socially isolated and a lack of meaningful relationships.
Unpacking The Idea of You
There has been so much written about the Amazon film The Idea of You and it has clearly struck a nerve with so many women! If you’re not familiar, the film stars Anne Hathaway as a middle-aged woman having a romance with a pop star 16 years her junior. And let me tell you, people have OPINIONS. Three noteworthy:
The Idea of You Is Right About Society Hating Happy Women—Middle-Aged Ones Most of All (Vogue)
Why Grown-Ass Women Love the Idea of The Idea of You (Rolling Stone)
The Idea of You Is About the Ultimate Middle-Aged-Lady Fantasy: Being Noticed (TIME) — And this gem: “the really deep taboo-busting is being done by The Idea of You, which is being heavily sold as an age-gap romance but is actually so much more than that. It really belongs in the genre of middle-aged-lady fantasy (MALF) movies. If there were a Comic-Con for slightly overwhelmed mid-career women—a Discontentment-Con, if you will—The Idea of You would have a main-stage panel.”
Equinox launches $40,000 membership to help you live longer (CNBC)
“Equinox is teaming up with lab-test startup Function Health to launch ‘Optimize by Equinox,’ a personalized health program that includes everything from personal training and nutrition plans to sleep coaching and massage therapy. The program, announced Monday, is part of the fast-growing market for longevity and wellness, where the fields of medicine, biotech, fitness and nutrition are merging in the quest to slow the effects of aging.”
I’m very curious to see what the age breakdown of members is. Will younger affluents see Optimize as a preventative measure to stave off aging, or will more middle-aged+ members who are keen to reverse (or slow down) the effects of aging sign up? Either way, I predict the clientele will be pretty insufferable. Imagine the locker room banter where it’s just swapping Whoop data and digs at each others sleep scores and life expectancy.
Related: Never mind Optimize, send me to Sterrokopje, a wellness farm and retreat in South Africa where I’d rather live a feckless month than an optimized year.
🦩The Retirement Round-up 💸
Retirement news is trending because of the release of the Social Security’s annual trust fund report on Monday so I’ll give you a sampler platter of topics. The good news is that it looks like retirement funds are expected to be depleted in 2035, not 2034 as projected. We celebrate the little wins here 🥂
But as life expectancies extend well into the 90s, that leaves a number of years the aging population is going to have figure out how to finance, because who can really afford all that life?? That means new ways of working and employers needing to adapt to an older workforce in dynamics, operations, pace, etc, when a large chunk of it is 65+ and still punching the clock. Still, the NYT calls into question whether the 401(k) was actually a huge mistake when “Americans who don’t have enough money set aside for retirement are now being told that the solution to their financial woes is to just keep working. Forcing senior citizens to stay on the job is cruel…and especially so if it involves physically demanding labor.”
Even the most seasoned of marriages can undergo strain in retirement, which like “any major transition, often entails destabilizing shifts that take many people by surprise. Although it’s still rare for married couples over 60 to break up, the divorce rate is rising faster in that age group than in any other, as baby boomers.”
This topic continues to heat up as elections are around the corner, so brace for more updates from the golden trenches.
🧽 Bits and Bobs 🪠
I did a research dive into LinkedIn to see how many people are retired and working, and the company pages that retirees set as their employers are just hilarious: like the above, Retired and Loving it, Retired and now messing about in floaty things for fun, and Retired and enjoying life (which strangely goes to a manufacturing company where the entire “workforce” is retired). I propose we start a new LinkedIn page called Retired and Freaking the F&ck Out About Finances.
20 brands catching baby boomers attention right now Really puzzled by Fisher-Price at #15 but that’s the power of grandparents, I guess(Ad Age gift link)
How the US retirement age compares with the rest of the world. Spoiler: Americans are late bloomers when it comes to retirement 🥀 (Newsweek)
Me, my selfies, and I: Those of us on the line between Gen X and millennial are watching our identities shift and age in a way no previous generation has (The Walrus)
Why are people unhappy at age 47? Good news: if you’re past 47 you’re home free? (Psych Today)
A fundamental stage of human reproduction is shifting- Can humans ever break free of menopause? (The Atlantic)
Scout badges for the middle-aged (McSweeney’s) The Ceramics Class at the Local Community College Badge sounds like my jam.
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That’s it for this week! Thanks for reading and leave a comment below with any feedback or modern middle stories in the wild. Or just smash that heart button and let me know you made it this far 💙