The Real Retirement Planning Problem

Our focus most of the time is on the financial aspects of retirement and planning for it. But there’s an ultimate goal involved. Yes, we want financial security and freedom. But the ultimate goal is to be happy or satisfied. That’s why periodically I report on surveys of people’s happiness and what makes people happy. Money and financial security don’t bring happiness or a successful retirement. Other things do, and we can’t lose sight of that.

This article is well worth reading on that front. It points out that pursuing happiness and trying to be happy are futile exercises and likely to lead to unhappiness. Instead it relies on Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl and works along that line. The conclusion is that people need purpose to be happy. Money and material things aren’t terribly relevant when a person has a purpose. That’s the great failure in many retirement plans. It explains why people go back to work after retiring when they don’t need the money, and why others simply are unhappy and deteriorate in retirement. They fail to plan what they will do what their days and, importantly, what their purpose will be. It also explains why for many people losing a job is an emotionally devastating event. It’s not so much the loss of income as the loss of purpose and the difficulty in re-establishing purpose.

In 1991, the Library of Congress and Book-of-the-Month Club listed Man’s Search for Meaning as one of the 10 most influential books in the United States. It has sold millions of copies worldwide. Now, over twenty years later, the book’s ethos — its emphasis on meaning, the value of suffering, and responsibility to something greater than the self — seems to be at odds with our culture, which is more interested in the pursuit of individual happiness than in the search for meaning. “To the European,” Frankl wrote, “it is a characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to ‘be happy.’ But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to ‘be happy.'”

According to Gallup , the happiness levels of Americans are at a four-year high — as is, it seems, the number of best-selling books with the word “happiness” in their titles. At this writing, Gallup also reports that nearly 60 percent all Americans today feel happy, without a lot of stress or worry. On the other hand, according to the Center for Disease Control, about 4 out of 10 Americans have not discovered a satisfying life purpose. Forty percent either do not think their lives have a clear sense of purpose or are neutral about whether their lives have purpose. Nearly a quarter of Americans feel neutral or do not have a strong sense of what makes their lives meaningful. Research has shown that having purpose and meaning in life increases overall well-being and life satisfaction, improves mental and physical health, enhances resiliency, enhances self-esteem, and decreases the chances of depression. On top of that, the single-minded pursuit of happiness is ironically leaving people less happy, according to recent research. “It is the very pursuit of happiness,” Frankl knew, “that thwarts happiness.”