Retirees are tipping long-held ideals on their head, writes Joshua Jennings.

Best not mention the R-word (retirement) to baby boomer Carol Jones. To her, it is synonymous with death. She says she formed that view growing up in a generation where people were presented with a gold watch at the end of their career and "12 months later they were dead". Not that Jones is dwelling on the prospect of retirement getting the better of her. It's never been on the agenda, she says.

"Retirement to me means you're sitting around doing not much of anything," she says. "In the last few years my partner and I reinvented ourselves and started a business that is one of the most pleasurable things we've ever done."

According to Mercer's 2008 Benefits Outside the Square study, one in four respondents 50 years and older intend to delay retirement until at least their 70s. But these days, says career counsellor Jenni Proctor, it's more than just a question of whether to retire or continue working.

"There are so many options now," she says. "Traditional retirement a generation ago was that you left work and that was it - you didn't do any more work. But people are much more active today. They're going into part-time work or developing some sort of an income based on interests, passions or things they've been messing around with for many years that they now have time to make some money out of."

Australians are living longer (ABS figures show the average life expectancy for a male in 1988 was 73.1, compared with 79.2 between 2006-2008, and the expectancy for females for the same period moved from 79.5 to 83.7) and Proctor points out one of the dilemmas linked to increasing life expectancy is that people have to nut out what to do with the extra time.

Rather than waiting around to die, she says, the raft of decisions people are making today revolve around prolonging retirement, considering part-time work, voluntary work or alternative side income streams, or even retiring from retirement to restart full-time work. The earlier workers start weighing up these options, the better placed they are to make the right decision, she adds.

"It's a little bit of a challenge to get that fine line between the amount of relaxation you want and the amount of freedom you want - to travel, for example, and all those wonderful things we all look forward to - but also consider that baby boomers who are retiring expect to live for many years afterwards and perhaps will need and want to have some sort of involvement in doing some work."

Jones (a former market researcher) runs a business with her husband (a former architect) selling ironing board covers that her husband designed after his mother had a stroke and struggled to iron. The business is "growing like top seed" today, she says.

"I work for myself, I have a thriving business and I'm relaxed because I don't care much any more what other people think and I'm free to pursue what I want to, and it's quite a blissful way to look at life," Jones says.

But author of a number of retirement books, Jill Weeks, says she would like to see better promotion of the lifestyle choices available to older workers contemplating retirement. "More should be done to encourage people if they want to keep working to do so ... The concept of retiring and stopping is a little bit obsolete because retire means to fall back or go to sleep or retreat and these baby boomers don't want to."

This February the federal government launched the $43.3 million Productive Ageing Package in a bid to offer better training and support for older Australians keen to stay in work.

A long-time researcher of issues around the ageing labour market, Monash University's Philip Taylor says the package is a step in the right direction - but public policy needs to do more to help older workers retain their currency in the workplace. He says he's sceptical about the quality of the job opportunities for older employees, too.

"I think employers do have concerns about the productivity of older workers," he says. "If you are a company that wishes to be internationally competitive the question would be would you be willing to countenance an ageing workforce and would you be concerned that your competitors who may have younger workforces would outperform you? I'm not saying I agree with that but I think it may be where a number of employers sit."

A US study published last year in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology found people who transition from full-time work into temporary or part-time employment are less likely to experience major diseases and more likely to function better day-to-day.
The study also showed people whose post-retirement jobs were related to their previous careers reported better mental health than those who fully retired - those who worked in unrelated fields didn't report better mental health, however.

Proctor says there is no "one size fits all" answer to the retirement question.

"Are they truly fulfilled by their work?" she says.

"Because if they love what they're doing, why not keep on doing it?

"But if it's having a negative impact on their lives then they have to ask why they're staying and, in many cases, money is the only positive.

"But if the money is the only positive, does that outweigh the negative impacts?"