Green Retirement Blog

According to, Merriam Webster’s definition of retirement, it is the “withdrawal from one’s position or occupation or from active working life.” Simple and logical enough. The Online Etymology gives the date of the first usage of the word retirement, to mean “leave an occupation”, in the year 1648. Most probably because, according to Wikipedia, up until the 19th century pensions didn’t exist, and if you weren’t rich - you worked until death.

The word “Retiree”, a person who is retired doesn’t appear in the English language until 1945, again according to Online Etymology. In the grand scale of human history, approximately 200,000 years, retirement is a very recent phenomenon - only 350 years old.

Of course, retirement has always existed in societies, when men and women were too old to hunt or work the fields, they would tend to the grand children or fix nets and tools. But the role of government, and corporations, in retirement goes back just a couple of hundred years. And Social Security, a worker contributed government insured retirement program, was only introduced in the United States in 1935.

Green Retirement Planning