Never Retiring?

I just read an article on MarketWatch about never retiring. Before we get into the idea of never retiring,  there were some troubling statistics in the article that I would like to highlight. Fidelity (the retirement/investment brokerage firm) is quoted as saying that merely one-third of americans that are working are going to be able to pay 95% plus of their expenses in retirement. Even more scary is that an additional 12% will be able to cover just their essential expenses, leaving 55% likely to have difficulty in covering these. We are talking about not being able to pay for food, healthcare, housing, all of which sound pretty important to me.

The solution to the retirement problem exposed in the article is to keep working until you drop. This is supported by evidence suggesting that reduced physical activity and social interaction can affect your health, if you go into retirement. OK, for the motivated early retiree, I suspect that this person will instead be doing more physical activity and having more social interactions in their so called “retirement”.

OK, what on earth is going on here? Do you really want to work until you drop? Or should I say, do you really want to be in the situation where you have to work until you drop? No! I would like financial independence please, and the earlier the better. Once you have that you can “work” on whatever you want, earning a salary or just giving your time to charity, etc. I have to give fair credit to the article in that regard about working on what you love, but the premise is do that because you’ll be working for ever!

The article also briefly mentions that many people with incomes at $750,000 and over (wow, how many of these are there?) don’t want to retire early, with 15% wealthy workers not wanting to retire at all, and many of the rest wanting to wait until at least 70.

What’s happening with the  $750,000+ income crowd? Hopefully they have not suffered from hedonic adaptation, although I expect that they have (I’ll write an article on this subject in my next post, as I think it is incredibly important).  However, I am hoping that this crowd is doing what they love, and that they are getting paid bucket loads as a side benefit. Working 5-10 years at this level and you’ll be a multi-millionaire. Yet, if you had been smart, you probably could have retired many, many years previously as a multi-milionaire, as your income would have been pretty outstanding before you even hit 750K.

OK, so in answer to never retiring, well, only if I am financially free first, and for many decades at that and “working” on what I love, thanks.