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 - Not only for boomersIn the interest of full disclosure, I will start by saying that I am 29 years old. Though every so often I fantasize about sleeping until noon and then playing gin rummy poolside all day long before grabbing an early bird special for dinner, in reality, I am just beginning my career arc and retirement is scarcely a part of my long-term plan at this point. But, knowing that I am deeply interested in issues related to civic engagement, a friend gave me a copy of Encore and, once I started, I could not put it down. Freedman's writing style is informative, and at the same time conversational and compelling. Most interesting to me was the history Freedman offers of how our current concept of the Golden Years actually arose (it was not organic, but rather quite manufactured). My generation only knows a retirement where grandpas play shuffleboard while grandmas knit. Encore elucidates that our current system of retirement is a fairly recent phenomenon, and one that is dangerously outdated at that. Freedman paints a persuasive picture of what our collective future could look like if we actually formulated policies and programs that capitalize on the "experience dividend" that aging baby boomers have to offer. Between each chapter are snapshots of encore careerists: people who heard a call to action and made a committed effort to respond. Most inspiring to me was that these individuals are not wealthy people who retired young and decided to volunteer to inflate their own egos; they are regular folks doing some extraordinary work, and dare I say, genuinely inspiring know-it-all young'uns like myself. I have already given copies of Encore to the boomers I know and love, and I'll probably be purchasing some more come the holiday season. A great read with some fresh ideas! Rating: - Not too LateIt is impossible to ignore all the gloomy predictions about what will soon happen to the Social Security system in the next two decades. Newspapers, magazines and television news shows are filled with items about the inevitable collapse of the system as the huge baby boom generation leaves the work force and eases its way into a retirement lifestyle largely dependent on monthly Social Security checks. Experts tell us that the system is bound to collapse under the combined weight of a huge increase in the number of beneficiaries and the massive decline in the number of people paying into the system. Proposed solutions to the problem have generally fallen into two categories, or some combination of the two: increased payroll taxes on those still working and contributing to the system or decreased benefits to those receiving checks. Marc Freedman, in Encore: Finding Work That Matters in the Second Half of Life, offers a third possibility. Friedman argues that the system could be saved, requiring no increase in taxes or decreases in benefits, by simply offering incentives to workers to stay in the workforce longer and continuing to pay Social Security taxes and delaying collection of their checks. Encore serves as a handbook for those nearing the end of their careers either because they have been pushed out the door into an early retirement or because they have become so burned out by their jobs that they leave voluntarily. Freedman knows that, at that point in their lives, many people begin to think about finding the kind of job that they have dreamed about for years while working at something they may not have enjoyed. They often find that they can afford to trade a certain amount of income for more meaningful work and they are anxious to make that trade. But where do they start? Freedman is suggesting that potential retirees should not settle for the traditional, and usually low paying, "bridge jobs" that are so common today, jobs that are used to ease a person into retirement over a two or three year period. As he points out, there are increasing worker shortages in fields like education, health care, and the non-profit sector, areas in which a person contemplating a career shift in his fifties still has plenty of time to find a meaningful second career. In fact, some are likely to find that their second career will last almost as long as their first one. Of course none of this will be possible unless employers and the government join together to make it possible for older workers to stay in the work force. Employers need to understand that retaining, rather than discarding, experienced workers is good for business because that experience will be almost impossible to replace from a shrinking pool of potential employees. The government must offer incentives to workers to keep working at least to their normal retirement age of 65-67 years of age so that Social Security taxes can continue to be collected from them. Those who work beyond that age should be exempt from paying Social Security taxes because, by simply not drawing from the system, they are helping to keep in solvent. Encore is filled with inspirational stories told in their own words by people who have carved out meaningful second careers for themselves. The book's appendix is filled with suggestions on how to begin a second career and has contact information for organizations in several fields that offer information and advice on how to do just that. This is an important book. Rating:  - Only Part of the PictureLike many books targeted to mid-life professionals, Marc Freedman addresses retirees who are physically and financially in a position to make choices. He makes an appealing yet dangerous assumption: Older people will be drawn to opportunities where they can make a contribution. They're more concerned with contributing than earning. They're cooperative, not competitive. To be sure, many people over 40, 50 or 60 are eager to help. Many want to be teachers, nurses and social workers. But some of us are just not suited to the helping professions. And some of us actually believe that, no matter how old we are, we want to get paid based on contribution. We want to get raises, rewards, promotions and perks. One reason so many mid-life career changers end up self-employed is that there's no other way to follow the profit motive. I recently met a lawyer who finished law school in his late 40's. Now in his early 60's, he has always worked for himself and done very well in a niche specialty. If he tried to work for a law firm, he'd be lucky to get hired as a part-time paralegal. Along with the nurses and teachers, Freedman introduces us to a former teacher who now works as a greeter at Wal-Mart. Unfortunately, these stories reassure potential employers: "See, older people don't care about money or status." Freedman provides a list of resources. Instead I would encourage mid-life career changers to seek one-to-one consulting from career coaches or else undertaken their own programs. If you're considering a business, go to the SBA or take entrepreneurship classes. Towards the end of the book, Freedman identifies elements of the infrastructure (taxes, health insurance and more) that no longer make sense and actually harm older workers. He quotes statistics showing that older workers use health care "1.4 to 2.2 times" as much as younger workers. It's not clear what orders of magnitude are associated with those numbers. I buy my own health insurance (you can always choose to opt out of an employer's system) and pay very little because I have a big deductible. I've reviewed several books, here on amazon, that encourage everyone to take a skeptical look at those "essential" medical tests. Bottom Line: Encore features some very impressive baby boomers who have made significant changes in their lives. Those who want to work for money fulfilling social responsibilities by donating to worthy causes, will have to look elsewhere. Rating: - ENCORE tells the stories of 'encore career' pioneersENCORE: FINDING WORK THAT MATTERS IN THE SECOND HALF OF LIFE tells of those who left corporate and other careers to find more meaningful work - something which is becoming a social trend businesses need to take note of. ENCORE tells the stories of 'encore career' pioneers who are not content nor rich enough to retire: they are locating second careers late in life which calls for new work and more meaning - and their numbers hold the key to a new social and business transformation movement, so any serious business library and public libraries catering to business professionals needs ENCORE as part of their collection. Rating: - A clear call for effective actionIn a society built on visions of social and economic utopias (and, too often, nightmares), Marc Freedman offers the most tenable rethinking of work I've seen in a long time. I'm particularly taken with his approach to our contemporary understandings of retirement. The chapter on "inventing the golden years" is a shrewd and apt use of the historian's power to make or break our collective perceptions of the things we consider to be natural, (when we consider them at all). It's clear that he draws on a lot of research when spelling-out his vision of both our present needs and our future potential, but the text is quite engaging, and the panels/profiles--the voices and faces of people in encore careers--really give life to the distinctions he draws between "encores" and "bridge careers" & "full retirement" as well as to the experiences of people who have longed to "stop climbing the ladder and start making a difference." The idea of "Encore Fellowships" strikes me as an actionable and promising, not to mention exciting, way to help the system work for people whose "time gets long," as they say back home, but have no intention of turning "the golden years" into "the walmart years."
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