Pre-retirement Planning, a Quality of Life Issue for Retirement

Abstract

The most conservative population estimation for the year 2000 is that eleven out of a hundred U.S. citizens will be sixty-five years or older. A more liberal projection would be fifteen to eighteen persons per hundred. Regardless of the size or the projected population size, however, a basic concern for the present and future retiree is how well are they prepared for retirement? The differences between a pre-retirement planning program and a retirement program must be acknowledged. A preretirement program plans for retirement. The early phases of the planning might be fiscal. In the years between identification and retirement, counseling and factual information are provided, preparing the individual both physically and psychologically for retirement. A retirement program normally is established to provide benefits to retirees, benefits such as: pensions, paid health insurance, access to company services, and so forth. This paper will examine current literature on pre-retirement planning, provide information regarding an exploratory study of pre-retirement planning programs in a midwestern city, and offer a paradigm for the professional social worker. The underlying theme in this paper is that a successful model for retirement is a preventive model. The successful retiree is not born but rather through careful preparation accepts his responsibility of retirement and meets it as another phase on his continuum of life.