Do You Have an “Escape Tunnel” or “Glidepath” to Your “Retirement Victory Lap?”

OK – I’m guilty. I’m full-on plagiarizing!

I stole all of the terms you see in quotes in the headline from Mike Drak, Rob Morrison, and Jonathan Chevreau (henceforth known as M, R, & J)

Secretly, I hate them!

You see, they put into 209 wonderfully written pages what I’ve been blogging about for three years. They co-authored a book entitled: “Victory Lap Retirement: Work While You Play, Play While You Work”.

It’s the book I should have written a couple of years ago. But, I let my constant sidekick dominate. You’ve met him – his name is P-R-O-C-R-A-S-T-I-N-A-T-I-O-N!

So, you go, guys! You’ve done masterful work with an amazing combination of advice from both financial and non-financial perspectives.

Dear reader: if you are at, close to, or even thinking about retirement, buy the book. It could be the best $15-18 (Amazon) investment you’ll make on behalf of the post-career phase of your life. (Disclosure: if you buy it through either Amazon link above, I will earn a pittance of an Amazon Affiliate commission).

An “escape tunnel” or a “glidepath”.

These three musketeers introduced a concept worth sharing because it fits so well into the evolving retirement landscape.

For several years now, we’ve been tossing around terms like “encore career”, “semi-retirement”, “unretirement”, “rewirement”, “reinvention”, etc., etc., ad nauseum. All an attempt to put a reasonable tag on this “new frontier” of extended longevity trying to co-exist with an irrelevant, worn-out, 85-year-old concept called traditional, full-stop retirement.

It’s taking us a while, but we’re finally admitting that it doesn’t fit for today’s healthier, more savvy “third agers” who are entering that period between end-of-career and true old age.  That space used to be about 3-5 years – now it could be 30-40.

Close your eyes: Imagine 30 years of bridge with three others your age, all with that curious old people smell.  Or 30 years of bocce ball, pickleball, bingo, golf. Or a couple of decades of “pity parties” and “organ recitals” with full-stop retirees discussing the latest surgery, arthritic area, immobility issue, slipped memory incident, or an acquaintance experiencing all of the above.

If I haven’t sufficiently pissed you off and you are still with me, close your eyes again. Imagine having gathered together all your natural talents, stirred them together with acquired skills and experiences and stepped into a vibrant life with inordinate energy, an inspirational reason to get up in the morning, and going to bed experiencing a “good tired” because you completed a day having served, contributed, and impacted someone or something.

That’s what M, R & J call the “Victory Lap” – a celebration of what you are all about, on your terms, on your schedule, doing what you are best at and doing it when, where, and how you please.

But you don’t hop off a cliff to get there. It calls for a “glidepath” or, if you are corporately-snared, an “escape tunnel” (close your eyes again and think Andy and Shawshank Redemption and the swim through the sewage).

Start digging your “escape tunnel” now!

Remember the line from Red (Morgan Freeman) in Shawshank when he ‘reminisced” about his lengthy incarceration:

“These walls are funny. First you hate ’em, then you get used to ’em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them. That’s institutionalized. They send you here for life, that’s exactly what they take. The part that counts anyway.”

Show of hands. How many just read a description of their corporate job?

Andy refused to get used to the walls – his escape tunnel took 20 years. The authors draw a parallel to Andy in the movie:

“The smart ones among us do as Andy does and start digging their escape tunnel toward freedom (financial independence) the minute they join the Corp. They view the time they spend in the Corp as part of a bigger plan, adopting the institution purposefully and using the benefits it provides to help them reach their long-term goals.”

When I started corporate life a half-century ago, there was a palatable combo of loyalty to employees, security in a position, and pension plans. Today, toss them all. Recent research is showing that over 50% of corporate employees don’t like their jobs. READ: they are doing it for the money.

An escape plan from today’s Corp is the appropriate mindset from day one. Use the Corp instead of it using you.

Sage advice from the authors: “ … begin planning today for your “jailbreak” by creating your own destiny and charting your eventual Victory Lap.”

Takeoffs only – no landings allowed!

I agree with M, R, & J when they say that your “victory lap” is limited only by your imagination (see my 6/22/20 blog here). Full-stop retirement tends not to tax the imagination. Their glidepath strategy presents an opportunity to be creative and continue to work on one’s own terms as long as one pleases. It may call for continuing with a current employer if the work is enjoyable, but on a part-time basis. Or it may be with another organization within the same industry.

I see it a lot with healthcare executives who glidepath into consulting.

A glidepath may team up with a Passion/Hobby Strategy with the full- or part-time work satisfying the desire to pursue a long-delayed passion. There is more risk here because it may be a major “lane change.”

I recall wasting a ton of time 15-20 years ago doing deep research on starting my own fly-fishing retail shop because I was so deeply passionate and immersed in the sport. Fortunately, sanity prevailed and I conceded that it would be turning a hobby into drudgery at 1/3 of the income I was making at the time.

Be sure to give more than a second thought to making a passion or hobby your escape tunnel or glidepath.

Do as I say, not as I did!

I broke from the Corp at age 60. But it was a “jailbreak”, no escape tunnel. I was mentally checked out probably two years before the jailbreak. An industry collapse and looming bankruptcy left me no time for an escape tunnel, even if I had conceived of the idea. My jailbreak was from MCI.  You may remember them – jail time for Bernie Ebbers (now deceased), Enron era, lot of craziness and Corp knuckleheads.

Sans escape tunnel or intentional glidepath, I went over the cliff into my own recruiting business, insufficiently prepared and with illusionary visions of being entrepreneur material.  If M, R & J and their book had been around then, I may have rethought that step, perhaps hanging in the Corp world for a few more years, continuing to feed a pretty healthy “retirement nest egg” with full intentions of absconding on my terms.

But, then again, probably not because I’ve never been good at relinquishing my time to another and, for decades, had found the Corp very stultifying relative to my inflexibility in the time ownership area.

Plus, retirement as a concept had exited my vocabulary and mindset years prior to this big step.

I guess you could say I ended up on a 15-year glidepath as I stumbled and humbled through at least two “reinventions” ultimately discovering my own version of a Victory Lap doing what I am wired up to do and which I intend to do until I can’t. I’ve unashamedly set that “can’t” as past 100 years.

Thanks to M, R & J for advancing the argument that full-stop retirement is dinosaur territory and that it’s well nigh time we redeployed the accumulated talents, skills, experience, energy, and enthusiasm of this 55+ group back into a marketplace and culture in bad need of a large dose of wisdom and stability.

Let me know what you think of the book – and this article with a comment below or an email to gary@makeagingwork.com. If you aren’t on our subscription list, it’s free and easy at www.makeagingwork.com.  Plus, a subscription comes with a free ebook: “Achieve Your Full-life Potential: Five Easy Steps to Living Longer, Healthier, and With More Purpose.”