Worst Retirement Advice of the Week
http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidciani/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
This week my wife, Becky, was in a store and struck up a conversation with an older gentleman. At some point, Becky shared that she is a stay at home mom after working as an insurance agent for many years. The man said he hoped she would be able to get back to her job soon so she would have enough time to build up her social security for retirement. I thought this was a sad statement on so many levels…
It’s not like you work 40 years then kick back to a life of luxury thanks to your social security check…what’s the hurry?!
Mostly, it made me sad to think that in 70 years, the man hadn’t learned that there are better ways to plan for the “golden years”.
One such plan is to not give up–We live in an information age, shouldn’t a 70 year old have tons of information to share? With the right tools or teaming up with a younger tech savvy partner, I believe our 70 year old could be making more money than he ever had in his life. And having a blast talking/blogging/tweeting about his life-long passion.
Anyone else have bad retirement advice to share?
Tags: retirement advice, social security
March 14th, 2010 at 10:48 am
I was just thinking about this myself the other day. Why would I ever retire… I mean, officially? I can’t ever imagine a day when I don’t aspire to do something. The day you stop trying and dreaming is the day you start dying.
Entitlements are the current major problem facing America. Entitlements breed laziness, and centralize power around the suppliers of hte benefits — the government. Before Social Security was put into place, people actually thought through their lives and didn’t depend on others. There was no expectation of a bail-out for retirement, healthcare, or unemployement from anyone else because that was considered immoral. FDR specifically tied Social Security to a direct payment into the system to get around this sentiment. As he said, tying the benefits to a direct tax created the feeling of a moral and financial right and would guarantee the system wouldn’t be dismantled by future administrations. This goes directly against the intent of our founding fathers:
“Then I say, the earth belongs to each of these generations during its course, fully and in its own right. The second generation receives it clear of the debts and incumbrances of the first, the third of the second, and so on. For if the first could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and not to the living generation. Then, no generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of its own existence.” –Thomas Jefferson (written to James Madison in 1789 ME 7:455 – Papers 15:393)
“The conclusion then, is, that neither the representatives of a nation, nor the whole nation itself assembled, can validly engage debts beyond what they may pay in their own time.” –Thomas Jefferson (written to James Madison 1789 ME 7:457 – Papers 15:398)
So how do we correct this? At the risk of begging the question, should we try to disassociate someone from a feeling of a “moral and financial right” to these benefits and, if so, how? OK, that’s more than a risk, that’s actually begging the question. I say that we should attempt this disassociation and we do so by showing what a burden taking these benefits represents to our children. Today’s entitlements represent a huge national security risk. 107 TRILLION dollars worth of currently promised benefits are not possible – and that’s before health care “reform”. This puts us at a great competitive disadvantage:
“I am anxious about everything which may affect our credit. My wish would be, to possess it in the highest degree, but to use it little. Were we without credit, we might be crushed by a nation of much inferior resources, but possessing higher credit.” –Thomas Jefferson (to George Washington, 1788. ME 6:453)
What FDR hadn’t planned on is that the benefits wouldn’t be possible to pay. Since George Washington stepped into office, saddled with the debt of the revolutionary war, our debt has skyrocketted 14,512,769.83%. 457.65% since Reagan. Ronald Reagan, for being a “conservative” increased the debt by 160%. Compare that with Bush who increased the debt by “only” 76.67% — a fiscal saint in comparison with his 8 years. More interesting is the rate at which Obama is increasing the debt — it’s very alarming.
The answer to fixing the sense of entitlement is to burden that feeling with a sense of that alarm — to understand what taking those benefits mean and what the debt means. We start by showing pro-Union Americans what happened with the Bulshevic’s and how that rose to communism which led to all of the unbelievable and inhumane treatment documented so well in “The Black Book of Communism”. We show pro-entitlement Americans what has happened to Greece and what the implications are — how it’s affecting national security and putting the country on the brink to civil war. Ask those individuals what a “vote” for entitlement on paper means if the country is in such chaos that it’s unable to pay them.
OK, so this was a long way for me to say that I agree that this is absolutely the wrong way to think about retirement. I take the opinion that there are three pilars to true retirement planning in this country : property ownership (not mortgage), guns and gold. If history has shown us anything, we are well on the verge of an uprising which may lead to violent conflict on our soil once again. It’s in that case that having your own property to hunt, fish and otherwise bunker down in is important. Gold has value regardless of circumstances and of course, protecting both property and gold is going to take those guns.
Those are my non-professional recommendations — but I really shouldn’t ever type out advice in the middle of the night again.
March 14th, 2010 at 11:14 am
Right on, Tob. Like Jerry Maguire’s middle of the night manifesto? This is good. I especially liked “The day you stop trying and dreaming is the day you start dying.”