OLD. . .or OLDER

When Andy and I embarked on this journey that culminated in the publishing of our book Make Retirement. . .Work, we did so as "fellow travelers" on the path to retirement along with 70 million of our fellow Baby Boomers.  We have never considered ourselves experts, although as our journey has continued, we have certainly become much more attentive observers of the opportunities and challenges of advancing age.  As we have mentioned during the various seminars we have presented on Making Retirement. . .Work, we saw a need for a book that would focus on the non-financial aspects of retirement--not that the financial aspects are not important; they are--however, there were comparatively fewer books that concentrated on the topics we attempted to illuminate in our book.  Our hope is that it leavens the process of preparing for and beginning one’s retirement years.

As we reflect on the success of the book and the key messages it delivers, we have come to embrace one of the primary, but unsaid, themes of the book:  We now realize with the passage of time that there is a difference between getting old and getting older.  And as I I told Andy when the first copies of the book began to roll off the presses, "May we always know the difference, while acknowledging the former and embracing the latter."

Rick Hearin