The Great Unretirement: Why Prepared Clients Are Going Back to Work
The Great Unretirement: Why Prepared Clients Are Going Back to Work
Ask any advisor what keeps a retiree up at night, and the answer is usually financial: market volatility, healthcare costs, running out of money. But a growing trend is exposing a different kind of risk, one that has nothing to do with the balance sheet.
It’s called the “Great Unretirement,” and it should matter to every financial advisor building retirement plans today.
What’s Actually Happening
According to a February 2026 AARP survey of adults 50 and older, 7% of retirees have returned to work in the past six months, up from 6% just six months earlier. Nearly half (48%) say they came back because they needed the money or were worried about their financial outlook. But that’s not the whole story. 1, 2
The same survey found that boredom and a desire to help others were also significant motivators for returning to work, not just financial necessity. Other researchers have described it more simply: retirees don’t miss the paycheck nearly as much as they miss the routine, the sense of being needed, and the problem-solving that came with their careers. 3, 4
In other words, some of these clients had enough money to retire, but not enough purpose to get up every morning.
Why Should This Matter to Me?
Here’s the uncomfortable question this trend raises for our industry: if a client retires with a fully funded financial plan and still ends up back at a desk eighteen months later, was the plan you put together for them actually complete and accurate?
We’d argue no.
A retirement plan that only accounts for withdrawal rates and Social Security timing is solving half the equation. The other half, the one most advisors were never trained to address, is what a client’s days actually look like once the calendar clears.
Who are they without the job title?
What replaces the structure, the colleagues, the sense of contribution?
This is exactly the gap our Four Pillars framework was built to close. When a client has already done the work to rediscover their uniqueness, reorient and repurpose their lives, invest in social connections, and define the legacy they want to leave, “unretirement” stops being a symptom of an unplanned life and starts being a genuine, chosen decision, if they choose it at all. It was part of the plan, because they knew they needed part-time work to feel fulfilled.
The Opportunity for Advisors Like You
Think about what it means for your firm if you’re the advisor having this conversation before retirement day, instead of the one fielding a confused, desperate call eighteen months into it.
You’re protecting your client’s retention, their referrals, and their trust in you as the advisor who saw the whole picture.
Clients are already telling us they want this. But the advisors who build this into their process now, before “unretirement” becomes a mainstream headline, will be the ones seen as ahead of the curve rather than reacting to it.
We hear it all the time: “I don’t have time to restructure my firm or become a therapist.”
You don’t need a psychology degree to open the door. You need a framework, and you need it to feel as natural in a client review as a Monte Carlo. That’s what The Purpose Driven Retirement Coaching Guide™ was designed to give you: a structured, CE-accredited way to help clients answer the questions that determine whether retirement actually sticks.
Because the goal was never just to help clients stop working… It’s to help them build a next chapter they never feel the need to escape.
