In all my years of working with clients, I can only think of two people who wanted to retire in the traditional sense.
Retiring the Idea of Retirement
The concept of retirement, as we understand it today, is completely outdated.
Wait a minute, did I say completely outdated? I mean completely, ridiculously, totally, absurdly outdated. It wasn’t a good idea when Otto Von Bismarck, the chancellor of Germany, cooked it up, and it’s certainly not a good idea now.
In 1881, Bismarck designed a plan for retirement, hoping to defuse a threat from Marxists, who were gaining popularity throughout Europe. The plan was carried out in 1891 with the age initially set at 70; it was lowered to 65 in 1916. At the time, most potential pensioners would be dead by 65. Smart politics then, perhaps, but bad policy now. If you reach 65 today, according to the Social Security Administration, you can expect to live around 20 more years. But we can’t exactly blame Bismarck for not being forward thinking enough — it was 135 years ago!