Good financial advi-sors would like nothing more than calling their clients and saying: “The plan we put together for you has worked so well, you can retire five years earlier than you planned.”

So, why would a book entitled Growing Older, Working Longer: The new face of retirement have any appeal?

To begin with, it is written by Monica Townson, an accomplished and highly regarded commentator on the Canadian financial services industry and a frequent contributor to this publication.

Second, the traditional concept of retirement — sitting in a rocking chair between trips in the motorhome — has pretty much disappeared from the mindset of those aged 60-plus. The new “retirementality” has people engaged in all sorts of activities, personally and professionally, once they step down from their “full-time job.”

Finally — and perhaps most important, from the perspective of a financial advisor — the content flies in the face of what we are trying to do: get clients to a state of readiness for retirement as soon as possible. Consequently, when someone suggests that “Freedom 55” is not only impossible for many but also undesirable, and that the new face of retirement has people working even longer than age 65, we should at least listen to the arguments.

There are a number of key points underpinning the conviction that postponing retirement is desirable, if not essential. They include:

> People are no longer sure when or if they will be able to retire. Volatile stock markets and low interest rates have lowered their confidence that they will have accumulated sufficient assets to afford the lifestyle they desire.

> A fundamental shift away from defined-benefit retirement plans and to defined-contribution plans has transferred the primary responsibility for adequate retirement income to the individual. Many people are neither equipped nor prepared to invest on their own.

> The very large “about to retire” baby boomer cohort threatens the ability of pension plans and government-sponsored retirement programs to provide promised benefits.

> Rapidly escalating retirement by baby boomers raises concern that there will not be enough qualified workers to produce the goods and services demanded by our society.

> The average age for retirement has been dropping and people are living longer. The median retirement age in Canada is about 61, which, when combined with greater longevity, means people are living as long in retirement as they spent working.

What is to be done? A number of proposals have been proffered, some radical and some intuitively obvious. An example of the more innovative thinking is:

> Facilitate “life course flexibility,” in which people are allowed to allocate their work and play more evenly to avoid years of hard work with no time for anything else, followed by years of so-called “leisure” with nothing to do.

> Enable tax-sheltered “lifetime accounts” that could be drawn upon at any time for a multitude of “life purposes,” vs accounts intended primarily for retirement funding.

On the less radical side are:

> Public pensions and taxation should remove incentives to early retirement and disincentives to postponed retirement.

> Mandatory retirement should be disallowed.

> Job opportunities and training for older workers should be created.

Growing Older, Working Longer is written from a global perspective with Canadian insights. The good news is that many other countries envy Canada’s social security system. The Canada Pension Plan, for example, is sound and capable of meeting its commitments for many years. That being said, there are questions that need to be asked:

> How do we protect the jobs of older workers who want/need to continue working beyond “normal” retirement age?

> How do we ensure an adequate supply of qualified workers to meet the productivity demands of a nation with demographics significantly skewed from what they are today?

> How do we avoid “intergenerational” conflicts of interest?

> How do we prepare people to assume more responsibility for their own financial condition?

These questions, and many more, are thoroughly addressed in this book. Some readers may find the treatment too deep and academic. For those who want to understand the bigger picture of retirement and how it might ultimately play out for their clients, however, this may well be the most thorough treatise on the subject you will find. IE