retirement life: women and men do it very differently - forbes€¦ · retirement life: women and...

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PERSONAL FINANCE 4/20/2016 @ 10:31AM 46,267 views

Retirement Life: Women And Men DoIt Very Differently

Richard Eisenberg , Contributor

Imagine you’re about to retire. Clean slate, freedays. What will you do with yourself? The answerdepends, in large part, on whether you’re awoman or a man.

9 Keys To A Happy Retirement

That’s my reading of the fascinating new TIAAVoices of Experience 2016 survey of 1,583 retireeswho’d participated in retirement plans offered bythe financial services provider serving thenonprofit sector.

The retired women, the survey said, were morelikely to take part in many particular types ofactivities than the retired men, but there were alsoa few types of things the men were more likely todo in retirement than the women.

The survey found agreement between the genderson one thing about retirement, though: “Thebusier you are, the happier you’ll be,” said EdMoslander, TIAA’s senior managing director andhead of institutional client services.

10 Activities In Retirement?In fact, 76% of the retirees who engaged in 10 ormore activities reported being “very satisfied”with their retirement, compared with just 52%who engaged in one to four.

(More: Unexpected News About Men, Womenand Retirement)

OK, I can see why staying engaged in retirementcan make you happier. But 10 activities? Really??That seems like a lot to me.

Next Avenue

Where grown-ups keep growingOpinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Retirement Life: Women And Men Do It Very Differently - Forbes http://www.forbes.com/sites/nextavenue/2016/04/20/retirement-life...

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“It certainly does,” Moslander said. “I’d agree!”noted Cathy McCabe, senior managing director ofthe field consulting group at TIAA.

But you don’t have to be that busy to be happy inretirement: 66% of the retirees engaged in five tonine activities were very satisfied with theirretirement, a tad more than the 65% of retireesoverall, but substantially more than those engagedin just one to four activities. Incidentally, whenTIAA conducted a similar survey in 1982, only51% of retirees were very satisfied — so thatsignificant sprouting in satisfaction is nice to see.

How Women and Men SpendTime in RetirementNow, about those differences between the wayswomen and men spend their days in retirement…

Broadly speaking, TIAA found, retired women aremore likely than men to be busy caregiving,socializing with friends and family and givingback to the community; the retired men are morelikely to be engaged in sports and working. (Thecaregiving theme for women also showed up in a2014 survey of retirees by the Society ofActuaries.)

(More: Do Women and Men Differ as RetirementSavers?)

“Women spend more time than men during theirworking years caring for family members, sothere’s no reason to think that wouldn’t carry overinto retirement,” said Moslander. By contrast,MIT AgeLab Director Joseph Coughlin has said,“men tend to think of retirement as a reward andlook forward to time for leisure pursuits.”

But there are a few somewhat surprisingdisparities between the sexes in retirement, too,as you’ll see.

The following activities are ones the retiredwomen surveyed are far more likely to do than themen (and a majority of women do all of them,except for “caring for others”):


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Spending time alone withpersonal interests such asreading (80% of women vs. 70% ofmen)

Connecting with and spendingtime with family (80 vs. 67)

Socializing with friends on aregular basis (75 vs. 52)

Volunteering and giving back tothe community (58 vs. 42)

Caring for others (43 vs. 26)

The activities that retired men are far more likelyto do than women:

Pursuing favorite sports (38% ofmen vs. 18% of women)

Working full- or part-time (28 vs19; though only 17% of retirees overallsaid they devote time every week topaid work)

Staying engaged in aspects of thejob/career I enjoy (26 vs. 14)

Interestingly, although retired men were moreinto sports, retired women were slightly morelikely to be “engaging in fitness or more strenuousathletic pursuits” (47% of women vs. 44% of men).“Women take instructor-led classes that are morecollaborative than competitive,” said Moslander.Overall, 69% of the survey respondents exerciseregularly.

Women were also a little more likely than men tobe engaged in “creative pursuits” in retirement,such as writing, art and crafts (40% of women vs.35% of men). “They might be taking paintingclasses. Maybe there’s a little wine involved,”joked McCabe. “It’s typically more of a groupactivity.”

Conversely, the retired men were slightly morelikely to be teaching or mentoring (24% vs. 20%)and “starting a new career in a field that interestsor excites me” (but career switching in retirementwas uncommon; only 9% of male retirees did it vs.4% of females).

Transitioning to RetirementThe men surveyed were also more likely thanwomen to say they found the transition toretirement “easy” (77% vs. 69%). This echoes a2015 MassMutual survey, where 70% of retiredmen said they were “extremely” or “quite a bit”relaxed, while 65% of women felt that way.

One TIAA survey respondent offered advice onhow to make the transition less difficult: “Try to


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ease into retirement. I consulted half-time for oneyear and quarter-time for another year.”

Retirement Success In 10 Steps: AneBook From ForbesYou’ve been saving diligently for retirement. Now make thatmoney last the rest of your life.

Advice for a More SatisfyingRetirementMy advice to pre-retirees, based on the TIAAsurvey: Start figuring out which activities you’ll bebusy doing when you retire. “Many people spendmore time planning a one-week vacation than a20- or 30-year retirement,” said McCabe.

If you’re stumped about potential retirementactivities, start thinking of ones you could begin —whether that’s learning an instrument,volunteering, taking a class, making new friends,whatever.

To find new friends, consider taking the advicefrom The Wall Street Journal’s ElizabethBernstein in her excellent recent article, TheScience of Making Friends: check outMeetup.com, the site “where people create localgroups around specific activities or interests andare looking to meet new people.”

What Happens to Couples’Relationships in RetirementOh, one more finding from the TIAA survey thatmight surprise you: an impressive 95% ofrespondents said their relationship with theirspouse or partner either improved or stayed thesame in retirement compared to before.

So if you privately worry that you and yourhusband or wife or partner will get on each other’snerves in retirement because of too much wetime, don’t. Just remember this about the TIAAretirees surveyed: “They didn’t say they did allthose activities together,” noted Moslander.

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