Beyond Financialization: Older Entrepreneurship and Retirement Planning

Recent research in economic geography and management studies has scrutinized financialization and its permeation into ‘everyday’ life. In particular, studies have highlighted how government policy is transferring the responsibility of pension planning to individuals, where retirement income is funded from financial market returns. However, research has also suggested that a financialized model of retirement is not fully viable. Our study seeks to contribute to research on the geographies of retirement planning by examining an emerging model of retirement: older entrepreneurship. In doing so, we examine how households and individuals are attempting to manage the inadequacies of finance-centric retirement plans through the development of enterprises in ‘retirement’. Specifically, we explore how people are running businesses from home at an ‘older’ age, displacing the notion of ‘retirement’ with a work–retirement balance.