Before getting into all the excitement of your newly shaped retirement life, you might like to know a bit about how the concept of life after work evolved. It is a pretty recent phenomenon closely linked to the move from an agrarian to an industrial society, paired with the tremendous strides in health care over the past century and half.

Many people credit Otto von Bismarck, head of the august Prussian army in the late nineteenth century, with laying the groundwork for retirement by establishing a pension for military personnel. He was no fool recklessly frittering away government funds. He set the age at which a soldier could begin collecting his pension at sixty-five. That would be like setting the retirement age for today at 125 because, in that era, the average life expectancy for Germans was the mid-thirties. The actuarial number-crunchers would have had no problem with a pension as a concept under this age restriction because, statistically, who would live to collect?

Don't think the bean counters in the U.S. had a much bigger heart when social security legislation was first passed in 1935. At the beginning of this hallmark entitlement program for Americans, the age for receiving benefits was set at sixty-five, which sounds great, even normal by today's standards. But what you might not know is that American life expectancy at that time was only sixty-two, so the government had limited financial exposure with this sweeping program. Only about 60 percent of the working population, those in commerce and industry, qualified for social security as the legislation was originally written. In fact, the first checks did not begin to flow until 1940.

In the 1950s, benefits were added to social security and the overall umbrella expanded to cover government employees, farmers, domestic help, and the self-employed. An added feature to the legislation was that workers could begin receiving reduced benefits at age sixty-two if they chose. Women became eligible for benefits in their own right in 1961. In 1965 hospital benefits were added that became the basis for the Medicare and Medicaid coverage that today's seniors are fighting tooth and nail to protect. Social security marched right along through the early 1970s, adding built-in cost-of-living raises. It wasn't until the late 1970s that the brakes started to be applied. During the decades following World War II, while social security was ramping up, private pension plans designed to mesh with government programs were expanding. Even with the private pensions, however, it was social security that provided the financial bedrock for aging Americans.

There may not have been enough money through these programs to provide for thedolce vita, but it was enough that, for the first time, legions of older workers could leave their jobs on their terms, not when they practically fell into an early grave.