Tomorrowville

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Where the chaise-lounge, martini-sipping, poolside retirement no longer exists. In Tomorrowville, ageless baby boomers job-share with their kids and take vacations and college courses with their grandkids. Status is defined by the quantity of time one spends with loved ones. And meaningful work after age 65 — paid or unpaid — is accepted, if not expected. In many cases, it’s a necessity.

Tomorrowville is a multigenerational destination, where a few days a week baby-boomer grandpa looks a heck of a lot like middle-aged daddy as the two men go off to work in their business suits. Only grandpa works just two days a week. Grandpa and grandma live just a few blocks from their grandkids and baby-sit them one or two days a week while mom is at work. Soon, though, mom plans to work from home along with grandma in the family’s new online business.

Sound too good to be true? Demographers, futurists and the folks who build retirement communities don’t think so. Many of the roughly 80 million baby boomers set to dive into what used to be called the retirement years want nothing to do with the old notion of moving to a perennially sunny retirement locale where shuffleboard and bridge are the main activities.

Besides, since boomers will live longer than any previous generation, playing shuffleboard for 30 years is the equivalent of a death sentence, at least for their minds and spirits, not to mention the cardio benefits are not that hot. Boomers also aren’t ready to give up the connections of family, friends and co-workers or the notion of giving back for the greater good.

A NEW MENTALITY

In some ways, the old “retirementality” was about stepping out of the mundane routine of day-to-day life in one’s latter years and relaxing — usually elsewhere. In Tomorrowville, the last chapters of life are more about staying in place and participating more fully in some of those day-to-day activities — but on one’s own terms.

It’s a kind of Zen Buddhist “being in the moment,” only retirees take more control over choosing the moments. And many of those moments resemble their past working or child-rearing lives. It makes sense from a financial vantage point, too. 

“Retirement that we’ve seen develop over the last 50 years — an end-of-life activity of saying, ‘I’ve worked hard, now let me relax before I die’ — that’s changing,” says Michael Zey, a sociologist and futurist at Montclair State University School of Business and the author of “Ageless Nation.”

“If you see yourself living into your 90s, that’s an awful lot of leisure time to fill up.”

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