Effects of Preretirement Planning on the Retirement Adjustment of Military Personnel

Retired military enlisted personnel are more likely than retired officers to find their choice of a second career to be fairly commensurate with their military work duties since officers rarely move into a high civilian managerial position. Consequently, it was hypothesized that adjustment to retirement would be more successfully accomplished by enlisted men than by officers regardless of how well they planned or how long they had been retired. A three-factor analysis of variance for unequal groups was conducted to test the statistical significance of rank, number of years retired, and preretirement planning on retirement adjustment. The effects of all factors and all interactions of factors were found to be nonsignificant with the exception of preretirement planning (p <.001). Those who planned well adjusted well, regardless of rank or number of years retired.