Men Still at Work: Professionals Over Sixty and on the Job (24 page)

The profiles in this chapter not only illustrate a wide variety of career paths taken by older men—business, higher education, writing, music, government service, science, technology, historic preservation, and sales—they also portray career changers, full-timers, and part-timers. Moreover, the profiles reflect attitudes about retirement articulated by men who are confident about working longer. For example, Don Brick
has
things to do, so he doesn’t have to
look for
things to do. Ted Grenham says it’s not about the money, it’s about having
structure
in his life. Michael Avsharian agrees: his work does more than provide a living, it’s a
way of life
. Steve Grossman, too, says it’s not what we earn that’s important, it’s what we
do
to create a just and humane society. For Bart Guerreri, work is simply fun, a passion. Jack Buckley also loves his work, but sees it as
a
part
of
his life, not all-absorbing; so he looks forward to retiring in a few years. In contrast, the prospect of retirement “absolutely petrifies” John Kaneb. An even closer examination of men’s reasons for working past conventional retirement age follows in the next chapter.

7

Why Older Men Work

As life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived.—Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., 1884 Memorial Day Speech

Chapter 1 highlighted two things that piqued my curiosity the most when I undertook the current book project and the preceding one—the reasons men and women give for opting to work well past conventional retirement age, and how men’s work life stories might differ from the stories told by the women I studied. Does contributing experience, know-how, and institutional knowledge give them satisfaction and keep them on the job? How important to them is making money? Men responding to my survey could check multiple reasons for continuing to work and add others. Table 7.1 displays in priority order their reasons for deferring leisure and retirement in favor of persisting in the labor force.

Topping the list of reasons by a full seventeen percentage points is the
satisfaction
older working men are getting, the
meaning
nearly all of them find in work. Using their professional
abilities
,
skills
,
and
training
falls in second place, followed by their
enjoyment of clients
,
patients
,
students
,
o
r customers
; the sense that they are
helping others
,
contributing to society
,
and
making a difference
;
having good health and high energy
; and
enjoyment of their colleagues and coworkers
.

When the Society for Human Resource Management asked US employees about their job satisfaction and engagement in the organization’s 2012 annual survey on those topics, the “opportunity to use skills and abilities” was found to be the most important aspect of job satisfaction for 63 percent of SHRM respondents, especially to employees with college and postgraduate degrees.
1
It is important to note, however, that only 3 percent of SHRM’s respondents were “Veterans” (born before 1945), the age cohort that is generally comparable to my respondents. The vast majority of SHRM’s respondents who deem use of skills and abilities as most important for job satisfaction are younger men and women: Baby Boomers, born 1945–1964 (43 percent); Gen X-ers, born 1965–1980 (32 percent); and Millennials, born after 1980 (21 percent). SHRM respondents also rate “job security” and “compensation (pay)” among the top three contributors to job satisfaction.

Jon Kapstein’s reasons for working track closely with SHRM respondents’ opinions on job satisfaction and engagement. When my survey snowballed to Brussels, Belgium, I heard from expat Jon Kapstein, freelance journalist, political advisor, and part-time consultant on European Union government affairs. Jon, seventy-three, gives me three reasons for continuing to work: (1) the satisfaction he gets from “making order out of the chaos of daily events,” (2) his enjoyment of challenging work, and (3) being able to afford living internationally despite the highly uncertain economy. Then he tags on a fourth: being paid and respected at his age for his useful knowledge and abilities.

Profile: Jonathan Kapstein

Jonathan Kapstein has deftly parlayed his considerable abilities and experience into career-extending work as a political advisor and part-time consultant on European Union government affairs in Brussels, Belgium. After earning a master’s degree from the Columbia School of Journalism in 1962 and for a considerable portion of Jon’s long working life, he was a journalist with
Business Week
magazine on foreign assignment in Rio, Toronto, Milan, Johannesburg, and, finally, in Brussels, where he still resides with his wife, Nancy. Over the years, he gradually reinvented himself by developing expertise in government matters. Four years ago, he completely changed gears by moving to freelance journalism and becoming a business consultant on European Union affairs.

Twice I had to learn entire new industry sectors when changing careers after a quarter century as a staff journalist on foreign assignment. The first complete sector change was at age fifty from journalist to chemical company executive. The second was at age sixty-seven/sixty-eight when I went to the aviation sector. I mastered both on my own because what I brought to the new employers was expertise in monitoring European Union legislative and regulatory affairs.

When he turned sixty-five, Jon had already spent fifteen years as director of government affairs in Europe and Africa for a major American chemical corporation. The firm asked him to stay on in a corporate position for another two years to age sixty-seven/sixty-eight as director of international public affairs based in Europe. He agreed because the work was both enjoyable and interesting. Then he was hired as a full-time contractor for the same position in Europe with a major American airline for two more years to age sixty-nine/seventy. This was challenging work, requiring mastery of an altogether new sector. Jon describes the position as “beset and bedeviled by internal head-office politics.”

At seventy, he joined an international aviation consulting group based in Switzerland as the person responsible for monitoring developments in the institutions of the European Union. Now seventy-three, and still consulting for this group, Jon says he is fairly well paid for part-time work and could easily be full time if developments warrant.

However, the recession and continuing slump have made it more difficult for the consulting group with which he is affiliated to attract new clients. As Jon sees it, “Continued work on a regular basis is clearly more age-dependent and economy-dependent than I’d like. If this consulting contract disappeared tomorrow, I’d have to sit back and consider what might or might not be available. I don’t think I’d hunt aggressively for another consulting contract. Perhaps, considering my major life career as a journalist, I’d do more freelance writing.” He also had another job in 2012 that provided what he calls “casual income” for teaching journalism online to third-world, midcareer journalists on behalf of the German government’s international development agency.

Jon continues: “I suppose the weak economy has prevented my earned annual income from growing over the past four years. Certainly the economic downturn has also made Nancy and me prudent in watching our retirement income, but then a lifetime of overseas work has always generated a sense of fiscal care.”

One thing’s for sure. The Kapsteins enjoy their international lifestyle so much, they have every intention of remaining overseas. They do miss their children and grandchildren who live stateside, however. “The only problem with working internationally is not enough time spent with family; yet, on balance, it is always exciting to use work as a means of increasing our exposure to new experiences.”

Another major attraction for remaining in Brussels is European medical coverage. Jon supplied me with a primer on the subject.

The European medical coverage systems are far superior to what exists in the United States. Contrary to the myth in US politics of the evils of so-called socialized medicine, only one country has that system: the UK. Again, contrary to American mythology, it works well. Meanwhile the other countries in Europe have different but mandatory insurance plans. The consumer gets to pick the insurance company, the minimum (which is similar to what the US calls the deductible), the hospital plan, one’s own physician, and specialist, and so on through a range of choices and preferences. One positive result of the Law of Unintended Consequences is that European hospital emergency rooms are just that. They are trauma centers, not crowded by the general public using them as primary care providers as is common in the US.

Statistics show that Europe is far better on preventive care than the US, although both are more or less equal on the treatment front. Statistics also show that the US consumer ends up paying more for medical care than Europeans who do pay higher taxes. Since everyone is covered, the average cost to the payer is pushed down by being spread out. Finally, statistics show that the US ranks shockingly far down the international comparative tables in life expectancy, infant mortality, long-term chronic-disease care, and other broad measures.

The end result is that many Americans, especially those with international experience, are choosing to retire in Europe. Just anecdotally, I even know several US Army colonels who have done that, although they are eligible for the military system’s TriCare, which is a health plan for career military and retired military families far superior to Medicare and the Veterans Administration system.

Meanwhile, Jon observes, there are fewer and fewer Americans overseas representing American company foreign operations.

We have lost the international cadre of business expertise, which has been taken over by Dutch, English, French, German, and other nationalities who run American companies overseas. In parallel, American clubs overseas have seen their membership collapse within the past fifteen years. The reason is the US tax system. We are the only country that taxes citizens worldwide rather than on the basis of residence. Although there is an exclusion for foreign earned income up to a certain amount and although there is, in theory, a tax-offset system, neither works. American companies find it just too expensive to maintain expats, unlike other countries. Many companies will not move an American with a family to a foreign post because of the added internal corporate cost. With companies that pay an equalization amount, that sum is taxed as income with the year-on-year multiplier effect of a tax on a tax.

Sooner or later, the lack of American international business expertise will come back to bite the American economy on the butt. The only saving grace is a personal one. It provides me as a retired American living in Europe with the opportunity to work as a freelance journalist or provide consultative services that often mean explaining the US to Europeans and Europe to Americans. It’s like falling off a log, but I fear for my country’s future.

When I asked Jon to give me his top reasons for continuing to work, he ticked off three: (1) the satisfaction he gets from “making order out of the chaos of daily events”; (2) his enjoyment of challenging work (“If it’s not challenging, I’m not interested”), such as having a positive impact on current affairs; and (3) being able to afford the experience of living internationally. Parenthetically, he adds, “You might expect that I’d cite as a top reason being paid and respected at my age for my useful knowledge and activity, but that only occurred to me afterward. I don’t think of myself as old even though my hair is more white than gray. From time to time I do wonder whether I have the same drive to succeed that I had in my mature, midcareer working years, but this thought doesn’t keep me awake at night.”

Furthermore, he is not troubled by retirement or aging stereotypes: both consulting and freelance writing are generally independent of age issues. “I may be reminded when some pretty young woman offers me her seat on the bus or metro. Though this kind of courtesy is common in Europe, not just for me.”

Jon expects to continue working “As long as it is enjoyable and paid—provided, of course, that I remain in good health. My father, my uncles and aunts, and my older sister were or are all vigorous, creative, and fit right through long lives, as I hope to be.” To combat the ordinary stress and fatigue of working, Jon enjoys reading, writing, travel, and the theater. Keeping fit is important to him: he swims for one hour four or five days a week.