With climate change emerging as a major retirement issue, you may be wondering what retirees can do to protect themselves and their families. It turns out there’s a lot you can do — adjust your lifestyle, protect your finances, and, if you’re really motivated, get involved in activism.
Let’s look at each of these possibilities.
Develop a green retirement lifestyle
There are several “triple win” climate change solutions you can implement that have the potential to save you money, improve your health, and help you be kinder to the environment. Such solutions include:
- Depreciate your home to reduce maintenance costs, property taxes, insurance, and energy bills. You can achieve “triple win” status when you choose a new home that enables you to walk or bike to get around town, helps you exercise and reduces carbon emissions at a bargain.
- If you can’t walk or bike, try using public transportation, which can save you money and reduce your stress.
- Grow your own fruits and vegetables. Better yet, replace your water-starved lawn in the process.
- Eat more fruits, vegetables, grains, and legumes and less meat. Try to make plant-based foods the main focus of every meal instead of meat.
- Buy food at a farmer’s market, preferably a market you can walk to. At a local farmer’s market, you’ll have the chance to buy local produce, make friends with the vendors, and get some exercise even walking through the market.
Most retirees have less regular income compared to their working years. But instead of seeing this as a declining situation, consider instead that you are living a “green retirement.”
Protect your life and your finances
Do you live in an area threatened by fire, flood, drought, or severe weather events? These events can be detrimental to your finances and health. If your area is at risk for these types of conditions, you may want to consider moving to a more climate-friendly location—before you get too old and don’t have the energy and resources to make such a move.
You can also expand your idea of a “retirement investment” to mean deploying retirement savings to reduce your living expenses due to climate change. The “return” on your investment can be well compared to the return on the investment of your savings. Examples include:
- Insulate your home
- Buy energy efficient appliances
- Install solar panels if you live in a sunny area
- Buy a car with high gas mileage, like a hybrid, or even an electric vehicle
- Plant drought tolerant plants with drip irrigation
It’s hard to predict whether climate change will cause inflation or a stock market crash during your retirement. However, you can consider climate change as one more reason to take steps to protect your retirement income and living expenses against the risks of inflation and stock market crashes.
If you’re really motivated…
Some retirees may want to reposition their retirement investments in a way that aligns their values with their investments. If you decide to pursue this admirable goal, just remember, the devil is in the details. It turns out that there are many different ways to identify a “climate friendly investment.” Morningstar is a great source of information on sustainable investing, devoting an entire landing page on their website to the subject.
Another answer might be to join organizations that help reduce the impact of climate change on communities. For example, the Elder Action Network was formed to create a community of elders who will leave a better world for our children, grandchildren, and future generations. Two of their initiatives are particularly relevant: climate action and lifestyle change.
Of course, the steps described here are not necessarily easy to implement. But this is the challenge facing the Boomer generation: addressing the grave threat of climate change to our finances, health, and society.