Here is a comforting thought for those of us advancing in years. Getting old is getting trendy.

This probably should not come as a surprise. The baby boomer generation has pretty much rewritten the definition of every age bracket as it has passed through it. Older age and retirement will be no different.

The leading edge baby boomers are now hitting their 60s so it seems only reasonable that the 70s is what now signals older age. The Australian Psychological Society did a survey of more than 1500 Australians recently on their attitudes to ageing. It found that the perspective of what constitutes a "young adult", "middle age" and "older adult" is clearly changing.

More than 52% of people felt that 70 signalled older age - although most people who had already hit their seventh decade felt that turning 80 was the real signal of "older" age. Perceptions of old age are being shaped more by people's health, general appearance and attitude to life according to the survey results.

While the physical signs of ageing were clearly a negative overall the views on getting older were positive with people citing the psychological benefits from their life experience as well as being able to have more free time to enjoy friends, family and travel.

And as our attitudes to ageing are changing so is the attitude to retirement - and work. While 43% of people said they intended to retire in their 60s almost 40% said they wanted to keep working either until age 70 or never wanted to leave paid work.
While a key reason behind that were concerns about maintaining living standards a major driver (according to 56% of people) was simply enjoying the job which they felt would keep their mind active. People who rated this highly felt the income was less important.

This Australian research echoes work done in the US by Vanguard's Retirement Research Centre which suggests the traditional retirement model - work until 65 then move from full-time work to full-time leisure is changing. As the full impact of the baby boomer demographic bubble hits the retirement years we should expect it to change quite dramatically.

This is good news on a number of fronts: for employers worrying about the shortage of workers the baby boomers - at least in a part-time capacity - seem keen to stay in the workforce. But for individuals the benefits in terms of higher super balances and less years to have to fund full-time retirement can be quite dramatic.

Let's look at someone 40 years old today with $100,000 in super. Assume a 8% market return and a retirement age of 65 the super account balance is projected to be $544,000. If they stayed working until age 70 that climbs to $715,000 and perhaps more importantly adds about 6 years in terms of providing a retirement income of $35,000 a year in today's dollars.

So working when you are older could be both trendy and rewarding.