In Defence of Work

In the personal finance corner of the internet, the conventional wisdom seems to be to work hard, save as much as you can, invest wisely and retire as soon as you can. The FIRE movement takes that further, to an extent that I think many of us find difficult to truly grasp.

And I get it. Retirement, or at least semi-retirement, has lots of attractions. Feeling tired? Sleep a little longer. Find something new and interesting? You’ve got the freedom to devote as much time to it as you like.  There are lots of positives that come with not being tied to a set working schedule, and that provide the opportunity to pursue so much that would otherwise not be possible.

But sometimes this message makes me feel like “if you don’t retire as soon as possible, you’re wasting your life”. That if you haven’t developed a fantastic range of hobbies and don’t have a travel bucket list that you are somehow boring and narrow.

I know that isn’t how it is intended, but it’s how it feels sometimes. And I have come to think that’s just not necessarily  true.

For some context, I spent the first 20 years of my working life in engineering and project management. Nearly everyone I worked with was in their prime working age. So unless someone was having a bad day and muttered something like “Man, I can’t wait to retire so I don’t have to put up with this”, the subject of retirement really never arose. And I certainly didn’t deal with the general public.

Then I took a shift in my career, working with my Dad as co-owners of an automotive workshop in a rural town in Victoria, Australia. We employ 8 staff and it’s a great small business.

The average age in our town is 10 years older than the rest of the state, so we have lots of people either retired or close to it. And many of those people have retired very happily, enjoying their freedom and the chance to rest after a busy and often tiring working life.  But I also observe those who take genuine satisfaction from their work. They really want to work as long as their body and mind will allow. If they need to slow down a bit, maybe work a few less days, then so be it. But they most certainly do not want to stop.

I think in rural towns it might be a lot easier to find a sense of satisfaction in your work. Our local dairy farmers see a truck full of milk leave their farm each day. Our local timber manufacturing plant sees green logs roll in, and finished timber products roll out, ready for their role in a huge range of homes and buildings throughout Australia. Our local forest management crews work outdoors, often fighting bushfires to protect both natural and man-made resources. Our automotive workshop helps people reliably get to where they need to be.

We don’t have large corporate offices with middle managers and hierarchies full of administrative staff. I imagine that in a vast office space, stuck in cubicle 378, it can be really tough to find meaning in a job, and that retirement must be a very attractive proposition.

In our little corner of the world, there is a strong and quite direct link between what we do each day and how that helps the society around us. Viewed through that lens, work feels important and valuable. So whilst we can all see the tremendous benefits that come with retirement, I think we can also recognise that for many people, the work we do can be energizing and vital to remaining active and engaged as we grow older.