Never Retire - What's Wrong With Traditional Retirement?
If you can pull it off and be happy and healthy in the process, there’s nothing wrong with traditional retirement.
That said—widespread and collective issues curtail pulling it off and happy and healthy in the process for an increasing number of us.
As we illustrated in a recent installment of the Never Retire newsletter, the numbers for one reason or another simply don’t add up. Across generations, large swaths of the population are not on track to save what they’ll require—generally a $1,000,000 or more—to retire traditionally. That is, to quit work altogether and outlive their nest egg.
For those who can pull it off, it often requires submitting to the grind.
Even before the pandemic, people started questioning the sacrifices they had to make in their prime to make traditional retirement possible. Why hate your life and job when you’re, say, 35, only to be physically and mentally unhealthy come 65?
Traditional retirement often requires more working hours that many of us want to put in during our prime, especially if all that time working might not generate enough income to support a comfortable traditional retirement anyway.
This might be the biggest problem with it.
Why sacrifice 40 or so years of your life when you can work less in your prime, but work longer across the lifespan?
Why work Monday to Friday for 40 or more hours and only enjoy beers on the beach on busy weekends? It really feels like you’re living when you work a few hours most days and hit the beach on a weekday.
The other, related big problem is that to get where you need to be financially, you probably have to aggressively invest your money and/or have access to a company-provided 401(k) or some sort of pension plan. Not all of us are cut out for investing or have access to these fringe benefits.
At the same time, you probably don’t want a housing payment in retirement. Therefore, you have to work super hard—like my Dad did—to pay off your mortgage before you quit work.
In a nutshell, if you can find a way to follow the path of least resistance—work-wise—and still make good money, why not do it? This is one big reason why I’m self-employed.
If you know you’re not going to save enough and/or you’ll be miserable in the process (or just less than happy), why not explore a different route into relative old age?
It’s this question and the different routes we spend our time discussing in the Never Retire newsletter.
We’ll continue this series on strategic alternatives to traditional retirement with the next installment, which will focus on coming to terms with the reality that you’ll Never Retire. This wasn’t easy for me. It’s not easy for lots of people. However, it might be the most important part of the process.
We’re taking it slow, because we have time! Identifying the problem, then moving on to concrete solutions.
For a preview of everything we’ll cover in this series, go here.