Old Age Plans

Abstract

Considered the plans and preparations 82 gay men had made or, in the case of the young cohort, believed they would make for their retirement and old age. Four important findings arose from the analysis. The first was that a notable minority from the old cohort said that they had they would work ‘till they dropped’, in other words, intended to continue working either in voluntary work or a different type of paid employment than their life’s work until they could no longer work. The second was a significant number of men from the old and middle cohorts had well-structure retirement plans. The third significant finding concerned a group of men living with HIV-AID: two from the old cohort and four from the middle. The stories they related suggested first, that illness can be the reason people take good care of their retirement plans and secondly, that no single account told the story of how men living with HIV-AIDS plan for their old age, for the evidence from this sample showed some had extremely well-structured retirement plans while others who were both precariously employed and well-employed, had no retirement plans to speak of and partly because they had not expected to have an old age. The fourth finding related to the assumptions of a small group of privileged men from the young cohort who explained that they were unconcerned about their material needs in old age because of financial arrangements made for them by their families.