Retirement Style and Retirement Satisfaction: Retirees Aren't All Alike

Postretirement patterns of work--employment for pay, voluntary activities, or no work-like activities--were examined for 1511 recent retirees from major corporations. A related typology of retirement style--reorganizer, rocking chair, holding on, and dissatisfied patterns--was also used. These patterns were examined in terms of preretirement characteristics of the respondents, postretirement attitudes about retirement, and retirement satisfaction. Multivariate analyses comparing the salience of retirement style with health, income, occupation, and preretirement feelings about retiring for predicting retirement satisfaction indicated that retirement style was a significant predictor of overall retirement satisfaction, and the subscales of satisfaction with activities and satisfaction with finances. Implications of these findings for preretirement counseling and retirement policies are discussed.