I have a friend, about 65, who says he is, in his words, "in the twilight of a mediocre career." He is a millionaire, and formerly headed a publicly traded company with thousands of employees.
He drives a new BMW and keeps a vintage Mercedes sports car in his garage. He has a house in the city, and a sizeable spread and country house about 30 miles outside town.
Yet, he indulges in his failure fantasy, perhaps as sport.
If that's his story, where does that leave the rest of us who are in what I call the "red zone," that dicey period when, if we were on a baseball team, we would be thought to have lost a step and optioned for the youngster from Toledo.
In career terms, the red zone is anywhere between 50 and 75.5, the appointed average check out time for American males, according to mortality charts. In Ukraine-speak, however, many of us have used our allotted time.
About five years ago, somewhat deep into that danger zone, I had such a career shakeup. I weathered it through a combination of luck, drawing on my own experiences and those of others, and simple survival instincts.
In the end, it was my younger protagonist who was pushed to fall on his sword, and I was sufficiently fortunate to emerge to fight another day, which, living in Eastern Europe, is exactly what one does. It's often a heroic struggle, which, to some of us, is why it is so much fun.
My own experience, however, was a wake-up call.
Almost immediately, I began developing a portfolio journey, and pursued this with equal or more vigor than I did the task of keeping alive a company. In fact, they were so related they could have been Siamese twins.
The fact of life is that most of us want to continue working beyond our fifties. Fully 40 per cent of us see retirement as simply an extension of our current work. Only 22 per cent see it as kicking back until one eventually cashes in. Kicking back is defined as mere subsistence, whether in the sun of the fancy travel brochures or the shade of life's realities.
The same Harris survey tells us that approximately 33 per cent of people in the United States over 55 want to work but can't, mostly because they can't find suitable employment. This army is made up primarily of people mustered out of the corporate giants.
While we are told juries are sympathetic to we old codgers in age discrimination suits, we also learn that such is extremely difficult to prove. There has to be a pattern of age discrimination, or actual verbal abuse.
In general, there is nothing legally wrong in the Western world with a company laying off people for economic reasons. Those people canned are generally those in the red zone, primarily because they are expensive to maintain.
My experience made me a firm believer in the portfolio life. I began to hone skills in other areas, such as public speaking. In five years I wrote three books, primarily to demonstrate my knowledge in various areas.
At the same time, I kept sight of various people much older than I who had not retired, but who came to work each day, people such as the chairman of my former company, the legendary Harold Burson, now 81.
Then, there was my old boss, Sen. Robert C. Byrd, 85, who recently let it be known he was running for another senatorial term in two years. It is a six-year term, and if he survives it, he will be 93.
But that's nothing, Dr. Michael DeBakey, the world renowned heart surgeon, is in his early nineties, and goes into his clinic each day. It was only a few years ago that he advised in Russia on Boris Yeltsin's open-heart surgery.
Their sunset years are working years, and they are proud of it. They have extended portfolios.
I began to think of my very rich friend, the one who considered himself in "the twilight of a mediocre career", and it suddenly became plausible.
At the end of the day, all he has to look forward to is moving his money from one stock to another, and not forgetting about a 10 a.m. T-off time at the local country club.
His bankroll is big, but life's portfolio is rather slim. And, one has to ask, is he having any fun?
Editor note:
(The above story is from a new book by Mike Willard called "The Portfolio Man: Surviving Professionally at Sixty". It is due out in 2004.)
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