Financial Independence, Retire Early, Grandparent Hard
A very specific kind of retirement planning
In my day job (family policy and tax wonkery), the young and old are often assumed to be in conflict. There’s a limited pot of money to be divided, and the money that old people have been promised through social security is being drawn from the wages of the young. At the same time, we desperately need there to be more very young people being born—not just to keep Social Security running, but because Americans are having fewer children than they hope for.
That’s why I was interested in a paper
turned up on Twitter that found that raising the retirement age for women also threw their children into precarity. When Australian pension reform meant women’s eligibility for their (non-contributory) pensions was pushed back, delaying retirement meant fewer grandchildren.When senior women couldn’t retire, they were less available to help with childcare. Their daughters (specifically daughters, not sons) were less likely to have children. The effect was more pronounced for the younger potential parents—those who had the least time to build up non-family resources to draw on.
As Lyman glossed it: “Many strategies that help societies cope in the near term make demographic balances worse later on.”
It’s not too surprising a result—I’ve benefited enormously from my family and my husband’s family’s involvement, and they’re not even retired yet! They don’t live as close as would be ideal, but when my water broke this time around, it was my mom who got in the car and drove most of the way down the Eastern Seaboard to watch our girls while we went to the hospital to meet their little brother face to face.
The paper underestimates what a grandparent can provide, since the focus is on measurable childcare. I know it’s been a blessing to know my mother better as a mother by talking more about my childhood, how she felt, what choices she made as I move through the same milestones.
Seeing how my parents becoming grandparents multiplied our joy certainly played a role in thinking about what pace of children felt doable and desirable. Ultimately, my dad only met our firstborn, though he got to feel our second daughter kicking before he died.
It’s made me think differently about saving for retirement. (Uh, not that I’m looking at my retirement accounts during the tariff meltdown). A little before I graduated from college, I read Ramit Sethi’s I Will Teach You to be Rich on home economics. (Annoying title, good advice).
I heard one piece of Sethi’s advice echoed by Helen Alvare at the Notre Dame “True Genius” panel we were on together: “Live at a lower standard of living than you can afford.” For Sethi, it’s a double savings—you put aside money now, and you need less in retirement because you haven’t accustomed yourself to expensive tastes. For Alvare, it’s a choice that gives you flexibility when one parent is laid off, or if you want to stay home with children for longer than you anticipated.
Now, I’m thinking about it one other way. An expensive choice I say no to now brings the day I could focus on being a grandparent a little closer. It makes me think both about the community we’re growing into here, and the need to hold it lightly in the long term if we want to move into an ADU in a kid’s backyard in another state.
I read some essays from the FIRE movement (Financial Independence, Retire Early) early in my career, though I never leaned hard into that strategy. FIRE (a big tent) is focused more on freedom from work than a particular vision of freedom for.
Thinking about retirement planning as a way of being prepared to hand on the gift we’re currently receiving is more motivating. So, I’m curious:
Came here to say similar to an earlier commenter — my parents were 37 and 41 when I was born (youngest of 4 kids). My husband is also the youngest of parents similarly aged. My dad lived to see my first four born, but as I was 30 when I started having children, and neither of my parents were in great health, and my in-laws also are not healthy (one developed dementia a few years ago), we are on our own with five kids under 8. None of our parents could pick up our toddlers once they hit 75. My husband and I have a primary goal to stay as strong and fit as possible so we can be present and active for our kids when they start having families. So weight lifting, cardiac health, good food so we’re not packing extra pounds around. Sunlight etc. The best retirement plan in the world can’t buy you health at 60 if you haven’t done the work at 30, 40, and 50. Edited to add: my parents were amazing in so many ways. Their health in some ways reflects the generational shift in America from farm labor to sedentary intellectual work (thanks car-centric urban planning), without a lot of the knowledge we have now about good diet and activity. I don’t blame them at all for where they ended up physically. I just want to be able to do more for my own kids, and pass on the many gifts they gave me!
Grandmother of five, I recently retired to be more available to my geographically close and far children and grandchildren. My final calculation was the fact that I had enough. I could have continued to work and had “more” but at the cost of missing some of the moments I’m now able to see. None of us are promised tomorrow.