The Retirement Panic Nobody Admits To
By Mitchell Schuckman, PCC | Founder, The Schuckman Group
Six months before I retired, I was at a holiday party, talking with the spouse of one of my partners. She is a senior executive, and someone I admire a great deal. She asked what I was going to do next.
I blurted out that I was going to open my own executive coaching and business development consulting firm. I hadn't planned to say it. I had barely thought it through. She said, "Oh my God, that's amazing. I would totally hire you, and I'd refer you to all my friends and clients."
Her reaction is what made it real for me. What she could not have known was what the six months before that party had been like.
A partner I recently coached, I'll call him Stephen, would have recognized those six months. He was living his own version of them when we started working together.
I Knew the Date for Decades
I spent nearly 40 years at a large professional services firm, more than 25 of them as a partner. The big accounting firms have had mandatory retirement for a long time. My firm's rule was June 30 after a partner's 60th birthday. June 30, 2025 was never a surprise to me.
Knowing did not help. About a year out, I was in a complete panic. I had built a lifestyle I wanted to keep, and I started asking whether a pension and savings would carry it until I was 80, or 90, or 100. By any reasonable measure, I was fine. That did not stop me from running dozens of cash flow projections, testing countless assumptions to see if and when I would run out of money. Some of this behavior goes back to how I grew up, and I'd covered that ground with my therapist years ago. Understanding it did not make the panic go away.
Then came the second question. After almost 40 years of work, I felt entitled to do something that gave my life meaning and fulfillment, and hopefully something I was good at. I had an idea that some form of leadership coaching and business development consulting was my thing, but I had no idea how I'd go about doing it and no idea whether I’d make much money doing it.
Everyone Assumes You Have It Handled
On September 18, 2026, The Wall Street Journal published "Law Firms Have a Big Problem: Senior Partners Aren't Retiring" by Erin Mulvaney, about elite law firms whose senior partners will not retire, some of them working into their 80s. Firms are responding with financial incentives and, in some cases, consultants who help partners plan what comes next. The article is full of success stories. One lawyer now photographs remote places from helicopters. Another produces shows on Broadway.
I believe every one of those stories. I also know what the article leaves out, which is the stretch before the success story, when a very accomplished person is quietly terrified and cannot say so. People look at a retiring partner and see a big career, years of lucrative compensation, generous savings plans, and sometimes even a pension. They assume the retiring partner is destined for a life of exotic travel, golf, tennis, boating at the club, maybe a board or a nonprofit. It looks glamorous from the outside. For some of those retirees, a crisis is brewing on the inside.
Stephen heard the outside view from most of his friends and family. They told him, "You have plenty of money, you had a great career, go play golf." It was meant kindly, and it ended every conversation he tried to start. So he stopped bringing it up. By the time we started working together, he was a whirlwind of uncertainty, conflict, and confusion.
The Panic Wears Different Clothes
For me it was money. For others it is identity. For decades the answer to "what do you do" came with a firm name attached, and that answer expires on a specific day.
For others it is productivity. Arthur Brooks writes in “From Strength to Strength” that strivers get hooked on the success their early abilities produced, that those abilities fade sooner than anyone wants to admit, and that a different set, the ability to synthesize, teach, and advise, keeps rising. Pam McLean, co-founder of the Hudson Institute of Coaching, writes about this stage of life in her newsletter, “The Bonus Round”. Her phrase for what has to loosen first is "the tyranny of constant doing."
More golf and a seat on a board are just not enough for many of us.
Say It Out Loud and See
Herminia Ibarra's “Working Identity” is one of my favorite books on this subject. She makes the case that people do not find their next identity by reflecting in private. They find it by trying out possible versions of themselves, out loud, with other people, and watching what happens.
That is what happened at the holiday party. I tried a version of myself on someone I respect, and her reaction told me more than a year of private scenario planning and cash-flow projections had.
It is also what happened with Stephen. In our sessions he was finally talking to someone who would not tell him he had nothing to worry about. He envisioned one scenario for his next chapter, then another, and we played each one out loud together. Many of them did not inspire. One did. When he found it, he could describe what he wanted from his next chapter in plain words, for the first time, and the whirlwind stopped. That was huge for him.
What helped me most was a week at the Hudson Institute's LifeForward program that I completed about a month before that holiday party. Focused time, thoughtful prompts and exercises, and the camaraderie of a cohort of 30 people, all in some kind of life or career pivot, asking the same questions I was.
If the Fear Has Shown Up
If you are a year away from your date, or a year past it, two things are worth knowing. The fear is normal, including for people with every reason to feel secure. And it responds to structure: a cohort, a coach, a standing conversation with someone who has no stake in your answer and will not talk you out of the question.
Some firms are getting better at helping partners planning the exit, but the hard work belongs to you. And, it tends to go better with the right support by your side.
Mitchell Schuckman is the Founder and CEO of The Schuckman Group LLC. He is a Professional Certified Coach credentialed by the International Coaching Federation and the author of I'll Tell You a Great Story. theschuckmangroup.com
Note on privacy: Names and identifying details have been changed. The experiences described are drawn from multiple client engagements and do not represent any single individual.