September 2001
Sustainable Retirement
Come early, stay late
by Janice Thompson
There is a lot of talk about retirement these days, especially since the oldest of the Baby Boom generation, which totals 76 million, turned fifty-five this year. Boomers who have worked their whole lives in traditional occupations, saved and invested their money, and have not been victims of an expensive divorce, medical calamity, or business loss are "quite optimist about retirement," according to AARP, a lobbying group for people over fifty (formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons). These Boomers consider it a well-deserved entrance into the leisure class.
The rest of us are uneasy. Even without tragedy or setback, a lifetime of lower-income jobs or a social service career just may not have left enough for retirement savings. Employer-based pensions of any form are almost non-existent in anything other than union-affiliated jobs or professional occupations. The eroding Social Security program threatens what we consider our long-held retirement model. The three-legged stool of Savings, Pension, and Social Security just might not support our weight.
Six months ago Newsweek ran an item by Jane Bryant Quinn called "Yes, It’s Later Than You Think." The focus of the piece, which appeared in her regular column on investment strategy and personal finance, was a call to members of the Baby Boom generation to take immediate steps to correct the deficiency in their retirement savings. The urgency of her recommendations was ignited by the answers to a poll taken by Newsweek of financial planners on the state of their "late bloomer" clients who were approaching retirement without sufficient funds to support them through their estimated lifespan.
The planners’ collective suggestion was to have the client examine the reason for their predicament and to make necessary changes in habit and lifestyle — in other words, spend less and save more. That may seem obvious, but we should ask the question "where do you put those savings that they might best accumulate in time to be of much use?" The stock market is a horror show. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan gnaws away at the interest rate. Even if boomers own a home they can sell, the proceeds may buy a smaller replacement but still not leave enough left over to live on for thirty years. One financial planner recommended that a late bloomer think about reducing his or her standard of living now and plan for a "sustainable retirement."
Sustainable retirement. To some, that brings to mind a cabin in the woods, miles off the grid, with lots of solar panels and a vegetable garden. And that’s not a bad idea if you can afford to equip a home with the latest energy-saving technology. But AARP reports that of the low income segment aged 50-61, 60 percent have a net worth less than $6,500. Have you priced high-efficiency appliances lately?
There are usually two phases of retirement; the early years when you can still manage to chop your own wood and be an active part of your community — and the later years, when you may be almost exclusively dependent on others for your simplest needs. Say you’re not cash rich. You still may have enough to establish yourself in a place that values people instead of stuff, where neighbors are not opposed to looking out for each other. Especially if you don’t plan to rely on your family for help in those later years, building a supportive community around you might be a good idea.
Sustainable retirement shares qualities with sustainable living, sustainable community, and sustainable agriculture. The term sustainable comes from biology and ecology and indicates a symbiotic relationship between different species, each adjusting to the cycles and balance of the other to create a richer experience within the relationship than either party would have without it.
Sustainable retirement in the economic sense means creating a lifestyle that you can afford in a place that can afford you. Use of fuel efficient transportation, rehabbed housing, local products and services. In other words, use the limited resources you have to build a community that will provide you with your basic needs and create a low-maintenance existence for yourself. It involves an investment of time and energy — while you are still capable — to build a support system around you that will exist when your needs exceed your abilities.
This type of sustainable retirement could occur anywhere, including the folds of a densely populated city. And for many, relocating is not an option. But for some, a new trend rounds-out the concept of sustainability by restoring places that have outlived their original use — towns now on the endangered list. Some are ghost towns of the mining industry, many are declining farm communities, and a few are diminishing cities along the rust belt.
While some of these restored settings are the projects of thoughtful developers, more often they are built one piece at a time by individuals who regard ongoing relationships, concern for the environment, and social equality as important aspects of retirement living. They move to a redeveloping area long before the traditional retirement age to take advantage of affordable housing and build the community with an aging population in mind. They start new businesses, re-structure their current jobs through telecommunications, or fill one or more positions in nearby towns. This small segment of the Boom demographic is forming "unintentional" communities, or what Gordon Streib of the Sustainable Communities Review refers to as "NORCs; Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities."
Rebuilding the
three-legged stool
William Neil, a financial planner with Lincoln Financial Advisors in Madison, Wisconsin, is unlike most financial planners: he thinks the word "community" should be a label on one of the legs supporting that traditional retirement stool. While he admits that cash and investment savings are important in our society, he and his wife list other criteria they feel are of equal importance in choosing a place to live.
Their decision to move to a small community was based on a few elements — such as a sustainable quality of life with a connection to nature — that would nurture and inspire Bill Neil in his other vocation, music composition. Most likely it would be a Midwestern agricultural community; Neil, after all, was still required to make some trips to his office in Madison. But it had to be "safe agriculture," so they looked for areas with a concentration of organic farmers and CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture). After considerable research and trips to possible locations in Iowa, Michigan, and Missouri the Neils were perplexed. "None of them felt right," remembers Bill Neil. "The community structure wasn’t there."
Then one day, Neil says, "I stood in the produce section of Whole Foods, looking at the banners that depict‘happy farmers’ and thought‘I want to live where they live.’" Taking down the locations on the captions, Neil realized that all of the towns listed were in southwest Wisconsin. One was Viroqua, a town with a population of less than 5,000 that not only seemed to have a compatible community spirit but one that had grown out of the Waldorf school there, an added bonus for this father of two young stepchildren. Most Waldorf schools around the world are associated with urban or suburban centers; Viroqua Pleasant Ridge Waldorf is the only one that operates in a rural setting. Neil and his family decided to move there; happily, they found themselves living in a prototype for the ideal small community.
The Waldorf school in Viroqua was the result of a grassroots movement of families that had settled in the area in the seventies. "When it came time to educate their children, the families simultaneously reached the conclusion that they could not just hand their children over to a conventional institution, associating it with the culture from which they were trying to escape.... A mutual need was recognized, and they created an alternative education program. Today the school serves the needs of children from kindergarten through eighth grade, has a student population of 162, a staff of 23, and is the prime reason many families move there," says Neil.
One area high school is based on the same anthroposophical philosophy as Waldorf schools, offering the same kind of hands-on education to the older students. The Youth Initiative High School, as it is called, can guarantee continued education in what is the model for the Waldorf elementary school. Throughout a child’s twelve-year education a family could develop substantial roots in the community. Neil feels the school serves as a cultural base linking all kinds of families, interests, and associated enterprises and is probably the reason for the high level of community spirit and evolving economic base. A student-run store within the school sells locally produced goods, serving as a retail outlet for some of the home-based businesses there. A local book bindery has set up a component of their operation within the high school; owners gain a needed workforce and the students earn business experience and a small income.
While the temptation to describe Boomers as a homogeneous group may help us prepare for the impact on society, politics, and the marketplace, the nearly twenty-year span of this demographic includes a full range of life experience and social values — and that creates different needs and desires for the future. In fact, according to an AARP survey of Americans between thirty-three and fifty-two years of age, one of the key characteristics was diversity.
This is what seems to make places like Viroqua so livable and well-suited for adapting to an aging population. The present population is diverse; cultivated by the basic principals of sustainability and symbiosis. People in their twenties find Viroqua a perfect place to fulfill their desire for experimental building techniques and alternative structures. Older residents can find comfort through this experimentation and try alternative energy options. Small installations of solar panels on rehabbed farm houses are becoming more common. It’s the spirit of experimentation and self-reliance as well as a respect for the old way of doing things that maintains people in harsh conditions. Existing farms have wind-driven wells that were used by the Amish, a group adamant about sustainability. They represent a good portion of the population in that area and are appreciated by the others for their skills. "I know nothing about wind-driven wells and rely on the Amish completely to find out [what I don’t know]. The Amish are homesteaders and provide the resources and a model for living here." Neil says.
Reading the Need
The town itself is showing a response to the growing segment that have or will eventually reach retirement age. Vernon Hospital, which is one of the few profitable rural hospitals in the U.S., has built a favorable reputation for its out-patient services and fine orthopedic medicine and has attracted general practitioners from larger cities who want a smaller, slower-paced practice. In preventative care, the hospital has recently added an exercise program for active seniors every day of the week at their existing H.E.A.R.T (Heart Enhancement and Rehabilitation Therapy) center.
Bethel Home and Services has been an established nursing facility in Viroqua for forty-five years. Between 1984 and 1991 this not-for-profit organization developed group homes, a day care center and twenty-five independent living duplexes. In 1999 they added an assisted living development called Maplewood Terrace that includes twenty-four separate rental apartments with on-site medical assistance. Bethel Home and Services is second only to the hospital in job opportunities for the local residents, each employing around 300 people. "Many people move here for retirement living because they have family that live here, although many move to the nursing home from other places even if they don’t have relatives in the area" says Inge Gerber, Marketing Director for Bethel Home and Services. She feels that Viroqua contributes to the independence of the senior community because it has, among other things, an excellent cab service, which is unusual for a city of its size.
For more options in health care, one group of alternative practitioners from Minneapolis, Chicago, and LaCrosse has recently collaborated to purchase a building in which to house the Viroqua Healing Arts Center. Currently they offer acupuncture, massage therapy, breathwork, counseling services, and care for the aging.
On a more personal level, residents have been known to help when senior residents need assistance, and do so without a lot of fanfare. A former administrator of the Waldorf school is now retired and lives in town. Whether it’s "passing the hat" for needed repairs or bringing her a meal, the residents pitch in as a way to show appreciation for her contribution to the school and community. The former director is part of an extended family of sorts. About the community serving in this way Neil says, "There’s an automatic response to fill a need; the phone calls are made...there’s a pleasure in doing it."
This level of involvement is bound to bring another question to the surface. How does the community that is now so attentive to its senior citizens also have time to keep the younger generations in the community to provide the services that the elderly will require in years to come? Neil says that neighbors are just beginning to talk about this. He senses that one of three children in a family will find a connection and stay in town. "What connects them here?" wonders Neil. Certainly the school-based businesses are a start. And observing other cottage industries within the adult community is an inspiration. "The kids want to have reasons to stay connected; they have so many positive experiences here...yet, I see them torn. I have seen a few of the young kids move away, but a handful of them come back and wonder‘now what?’"
But new residents bring new talents to teach. And this challenge may be the inspiration for a project that Neil is initiating called The Creative Wisdom Society, a discussion forum for creative people in the community who are looking for ways to survive both psychologically and economically. "It may just be a way of teaching them how to present themselves," suggests Neil.
In creating that connection with the younger people, Neil says he would like to have some sort of community arts center in town that students could come back to, drawing on the strong theatre emphasis of their Waldorf curriculum. Or such a center could encourage visual art students to stay and work for the businesses there. Needs of an aging population will always create new businesses. "There is a teacher from Northwestern University in Illinois that teaches harp to students on her farm," offers Bethel’s Gerber. "They call themselves‘Healing Harps’ and perform for the nursing residents there." Younger seniors will stay healthy longer and want to stay more involved. "There is a new, active senior center and Viroqua now has a senior choir," she adds.
Will towns like Viroqua become so attractive that they get congested and unmanageable? Can these communities survive the generational shifts they will encounter? Perhaps they will become so successful in aged care that it will give new meaning to the label "Boom Town." They will undoubtedly have to adjust to each ripple of changing population and prepare to survive the next shade of grey — Generation Xers that will, no doubt, have different values and economic challenges. In the meantime the real value of communities like Viroqua is diversity and the desire of everyone to live there. Neil concludes "There’s a force beneath the surface, people are drawn to get together and solve a problem."
Resources
www.viroqua-wisconsin.com
www.aarp.org/mmaturity/may_jun00/50alive.html
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