Retire Retirement: Career Strategies for the Boomer Generation

by Tamara Erickson

Book Overview

Good news: there is no need to retire. There is no need to pack up your desk or attend one more retirement party. Why? With the widening gap between the number of workers and the demand for talent, employers are looking to keep smart, productive workers in the workplace. The growing talent shortage will allow you to re-negotiate your relationship with work. The question is how will you make the most of your new career options. By retreating from traditional...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1422120597
• ISBN13: 9781422120590
• Release Date: January 2008
• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
• Length: 183 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.5" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Boomers Retire Retirement

As an expert in workplace planning, Tamara Erickson accurately captures the sentiment of the boomer generation in the title of her book. Her research supports the desire for most boomers to continue to work well beyond the traditional retirement age and explains why it is not very practical to consider full retirement for this generation given the realities of longer, healthier living. Boomers are redefining retirement and just in time for the workplace that is facing a talent gap of major proportions. In 5 useful chapters, Erickson outlines the career strategies that can help a boomer achieve their goals in the next phase of their life, which Erickson calls "middlessence". You will learn why you think the way you do, have your assumtions about retirement challenged, sort through your options in a practical and helpful way, learn how to renegotiate your employment or work deal with an employer to get what you really want, and be challenged to reinvent your career and your life for greater satisfaction and fulfillment. This is a great text for every boomer and for every employer who works with boomers or needs to fill a talent gap! Sheryl Dawson, COO Total Career Success, Inc. Co-author,Job Search: The Total System (3rd Ed)

Essential Survival Guide for the Third Phase of Life

As someone shuffling towards the "Third Phase of Life" I found Tamara Erickson's book an essential guide to planning for an active and involved retirement. Her definition of retirement as "A New Life Stage" is encouraging and the options that she lists are practical pointers towards making the most of the rest of your life. Buy this book in your mid-to-late fifties, as I did and give yourself plenty of time to not only read, understand and own the ideas she writes about, but to make practical plans for building the springboard you need to actively dive into the exciting possibilities of retirement, rather than passively falling into the abyss of old age. Of all the advice given in this book, I found Chapter Five on "Reinventing Your Career and Your Life" the most useful. It begins with the profound wisdom of suggesting "Doing What You Want" is the basis for retirement planning and then goes on to treat this in the same way that any executive would approach a business plan, including advice on networking and "Redefining Your Own Brand" - all of which offers a very reassuring and practical approach to defining what you want out of life and going about getting it. Highly recommended for anyone looking forward, not so much to 'retirement' as to pursuing a life-long dream.

Life Lures

Work and life is more than the compound word worklife. We need to integrate work and leisure througout our life. Tammy Erickson's Retire Retirement captures the essence of the integrated life. You feel like you are having a conversation with Tammy and can hear her voice in the book. I liked page 113 about the global view of what the ideas of work/leisure cycles are. Also, starting on page 128, there are great ways of selling your ideas.I had not heard "life lures"...that has staying power. Thanks for creating this book. It will serve a lot of needs. I think Gen Y is going to be eager to know what to do. As Tammy writes, `boomer parents, you have loved those little darlings to pieces."

Refreshing Look ay Retirement

Really liked this book. I've read several on this subject and this is the first one that really probes into the "new" retirement paradigm (Love that word). Here is a quote: "30 years, say from age 55 to 85 is a long time. Its enough time to do "it" all over again - differently, better, and with the benefit of experience and freedom of focus. You may want to attempt a profession you didn't try the first time around. 30 years is plenty of time to go to med school, nursing or law school." Truth is 60 or 65 is not old and Tamara brings that point home as it relates to the work world.

Ms Erickson Gets It!

In Retire Retirement, Tamara Erickson reviews the intellectual, social, emotional and generational challenges of the coming decades. Retirement as we know it is a non-starter. The decades following traditional work require creativity and planning and this books continues the dialogue in clear and inviting terms. Bravo! Alan Bernstein (author, Your Retirement,Your Way)