Tom's Life Bits

Diana Armbrust, from left, Susan Robinson and Jim Brooks share laughs together as wedding photographs of Robinson and her husband, Ferruh Muktar, are passed around the room at a dinner party at the couples Lido Key home on Saturday, July 21, 2007. Robinson, owner of Key Concierge, was once a high profile corporate business woman in her younger years and after an early retirement has since reinvented herself as an entrepreneur.

Retirees are reinventing themselves

By DEVONA WALKER

devona.walker@heraldtribune.com

While Orlando sometimes wears the tag “Vegas for Kids,” Southwest Florida is the preferred destination for sun-starved retirees who flock here for the white sands, warm waters and quality of life.

That has not changed. What has changed is the retirees themselves.

Fading are World War II-era retirees, many of whom were civil servants, commonly referred to as the “Greatest Generation.”

They are being replaced by thousands of baby boomers: younger at retirement, more active and slightly more urbane.

Though they are still coming for the sun, many are reinventing themselves in retirement.

Statistically speaking, they are also reinventing the concept of retirement. Many return to work in so-called bridge occupations. Others, who were hampered by vocational restraints in their younger years, are flexing their entrepreneurial muscles.

In the process, they are changing the cultural dynamics of Southwest Florida.

Susan Robinson, 55, spent more than 20 years in the insurance and finance sectors. About five years ago, she was offered an early retirement. She took the leap, longing to return to her second home in Sarasota.

Though technically retiring, she never planned on whittling away her time at the beach or the golf course.

For her, leaving the corporate world was less about “withdrawing” than about opportunity.

“I spent all my working years with Fortune 500 companies. I worked in international markets, and I was very successful in that, but when the opportunity presented itself, I didn't blink,” Robinson said. “I took an early retirement package gleefully. I was happy to have this opportunity to reinvent myself.”

She and her husband, Ferruh Muktar, met in Paris while she was traveling for work. He was a photographer who also owned a computer trouble-shooting business. In 1999, they bought a second home in Sarasota that they used primarily for vacations.

“When I came to Sarasota for the first time, nearly 10 years ago, I was bitten by something that said, 'This is where I want to be,'” Robinson said.

In Sarasota, she found the right balance of artistic and mental stimulation along with a slower pace of life.

“Baby boomers were brought up on the need to do things. It was the first generation that had TV. It was the generation that embraced the fitness movement. It was the first generation that felt it really needed to make a difference,” Robinson said. “Baby boomers have characteristics that defined it, and they still define it now.”

“The sleepy village where you play shuffleboard all day is not going to attract, but Sarasota is.”

Being a property owner in Sarasota while still living near Boston, she often worried about her home – whether the air-conditioning was working, if a recent storm had caused leaks.

Shortly after retiring, she was sitting on the beach at Lido Key, thinking about what to do with the rest of her life. It came to her. “Like they say, 'Necessity is the mother of invention.'”

Robinson figured she had come up with something Sarasota needed, and it came to her through her own experience.

She started a business that would take care of people's homes while they were away and take care of their needs while they were here.

“I didn't do it out of necessity, not financial necessity – but mental necessity,” Robinson said. “I needed the stimulation. It was definitely a cerebral necessity.”

“The wonderful thing about workplaces are the social interactions, the change of ideas, the problem solving. I had to have that stimulation.”

Robinson and her husband run Key Concierge on Lido Key.

For vacationers arriving in Florida to a home that they own but perhaps have never actually lived in, Robinson and Muktar provide items such as toiletries, inflatable beds and dinnerware, and services such as a personal chef, massage therapist or a chartered boat cruise.

While those same vacationers are back home, Robinson and her husband will organize the utility and pool services.

Her business has evolved over the years, from the simple basics of plant care or pet sitting to being essentially a personal assistant for the second homeowner.

In some cases, the services are much more involved.

For example, one customer who lived abroad found that the building of his home was getting behind schedule. He hired Robinson to keep an eye on the project and to go to bat for him. By the time he arrived to Sarasota, there was no hint of even the most minor hiccup.

On Saturday, Robinson hosted a dinner party, which doubled as an audition for a personal chef she was interviewing for her business. She invited a mixed group of friends, many entrepreneurial baby boomers like herself.

Like Robinson, none regret their decisions to leave the conventional labor market early, she says.

“I can tell you this, no one I know has ever regretted doing what they are doing in retirement,” Robinson said. “If I regret anything about it, it's that I didn't do it earlier.”

Americans 50 and older make up one-third of the population, but about 70 percent of the nation's total net worth, with spending power of $2.3 trillion.

That wealth gives them the flexibility and, in many cases, the capital to support post-retirement reinvention.

For Robinson, the business acumen and savvy she learned in corporate America has helped her succeed in the second phase of her life.

“When you think about them, you have to check your assumptions at the door and forget everything you thought you knew about turning 50,” said David Weigelt, marketing strategist and partner at Immersion Active, a Maryland-based 50-plus marketing firm.

“It is not the beginning of the end, but rather a new era in their lives. They are ready and eager to partake in new experiences and embark on new adventures.”

The U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that about one-third of retirees in their 50s go back to work after retirement while about as many as two-thirds work in “bridge jobs” rather than move directly out of the labor force.

That is largely considered positive because it shows more activity later in life and less dependence on public services.

There are a myriad of inspirations for the trend toward post-retirement reinvention – money, a sense of identity and belonging, as well as a longing to continue to develop social relationships that are born from the work culture – but Weigelt says experience is the most common.

“At the core, it's experiential; the desire to learn and live life to its fullest.”

WHO QUALIFIES?

Most define baby boomers as anyone born between 1946 and 1964 in a country that experienced an unusual spike in birth rates following World War II. That was a phenomenon commonly known as the baby boom, hence the name.

Baby boomers have become a very different generation in American history, with different tastes, income and choices in retirement.

They were influenced by the Beatles, America's suburban expansion, the women's rights movement, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Kennedy assassination and the Vietnam War, and were the first generation to grow up with television.

One in five baby boomers is helping to care for an aging parent. Boomers have a higher divorce rate than traditional retirees.

The generally contribute more generously to charities, with about one-third planning to increase their giving in the next five years.

Early retirees also are an emerging subgroup in this demographic, the most affluent of the population. Many of them have earned enough money to not have to work for the rest of their lives fairly early in their career. The early retirees are used to being in control and are typically intellectual.