A First-Person Reflection on Lyn Alden’s book Broken Money.

Every now and then, a financial book lands in my lap that makes me sit up a little straighter in my recliner and mumble something classy like, “Well, that explains a lot.” Lyn Alden’s Broken Money is one of those rare books.

It pulls the curtain back on how money actually works — how it used to work, why it changed, and what it means for people like us who’d prefer our savings to hold their value longer than a carton of milk. I also subscribe to Lyn’s newsletter and recommend it very highly for her insights on current market strategy.

If you’re retired or planning to be soon, the ideas in this book matter. They matter because the stability of your nest egg depends on a monetary system that many people don’t fully understand. And frankly, this system isn’t exactly a well-oiled machine. It’s more like an aging car that rattles when you hit 60 and leaks mystery fluid in the driveway, it still gets you where you need to go, but it makes you nervous.

So pull up a chair, pour a little something comforting, and let’s navigate what Broken Money means for retirees.

Money Isn’t What We Think It Is — And It Never Really Was

Here’s something Broken Money makes clear: money isn’t wealth. Money is a tool for measuring wealth — and sometimes not a very precise one. It’s like the bathroom scale that swears you gained three pounds overnight even though you only ate a single cookie and one completely innocent bowl of ice cream.

Throughout history, money has changed shape: beads, cowrie shells, gold, paper, bank credit, now digital numbers dancing in databases. But the key idea Alden wants us to grasp is that money is really just a ledger, a record of who owns what. And the technology used to maintain that ledger determines how fair, stable, and predictable the system is.

If that sounds abstract, don’t worry — the implications are much more familiar.

When the ledger is stable? Your savings hold value.
When the ledger is manipulated? Your savings quietly shrink without your permission.

And that’s where retirees should lean in a little.

A System That Leaks — Slowly, Quietly, and Expensively

Alden argues that today’s monetary system is “broken,” not because it fails every day, but because it fails gradually. Think of inflation as a slow drip under your kitchen sink. You don’t see it immediately, but one day the cabinet floor gives way and you discover your cereal boxes floating like miniature rafts.

Most retirees know inflation intimately. You feel it when the price of groceries waltzes upward. When insurance premiums masquerade as ransom notes. When that restaurant you love quietly shrinks its dinner portions and calls it “a brand-new menu concept.”

Alden’s point is simple: in a fiat-money system (that’s our current system), the supply of money expands regularly. Governments and central banks create more of it, often with the best of intentions, but the result is that the dollars you saved during your working years gradually lose their muscle.

And here’s the kicker: the people hurt most by this system are those who rely on savings — which includes retirees. When wages don’t matter anymore and investment risk feels as welcome as a surprise polar bear in your campsite, you end up leaning heavily on the purchasing power of the money you’ve already accumulated.

If that money decays?

Well… that’s the “broken” part.

Living in the Wrong Country Can Break Your Nest Egg Entirely

One of the most powerful parts of Broken Money is Alden’s discussion of global currency inequality. We retirees often think U.S. inflation is the whole story — meanwhile, hyperinflation in other countries has devoured entire retirements in a matter of months.

Alden points out that there are 160+ currencies in the world. Most perform far worse than the U.S. dollar. In some places, a lifetime of careful saving can evaporate like a snowflake on a stovetop.

And here’s the uncomfortable truth she highlights:

Your retirement outcome depends heavily on which currency you’re married to.

You and I may feel frustrated with inflation here but imagine living somewhere your currency plummets 20% between breakfast and lunch. Suddenly, clipping coupons won’t save you; you’d need a magic trick.

Now, we don’t face that level of chaos in the United States, thankfully. But the message is clear: the system’s stability is fragile, and retirees are often the first to feel tremors.

Hard Money vs. Soft Money: A Tale as Old as Time

Alden spends a lot of time reminding us that “harder money” (scarcer, harder to create) tends to beat “softer money” (easy to create) over long stretches of time. History is full of softer currencies melting away like a forgotten chocolate bar in a glove compartment.

Gold won over silver. The dollar won over flimsier local currencies. And now, we’re watching people gravitate toward new forms of “harder” money, especially in countries dealing with runaway inflation.

You don’t need to be a gold hoarder or a Bitcoin evangelist to appreciate the point:

Retirees need money that doesn’t erode.

Period.

When you’re young, you can outrun inflation by earning more, investing aggressively, or switching careers. When you’re retired, the game changes. The money you saved is the money you have.

Alden’s message is a quiet nudge: stay aware of how your currency behaves. Don’t assume stability is guaranteed. Plenty of retirees in other countries made that mistake and ended up watching their savings disintegrate like tissue paper in a hurricane.

The Centralization Problem: Too Much Control in Too Few Hands

Alden doesn’t rant against governments or central banks. Instead, she points out a simple structural weakness: when a handful of institutions control the money supply, those institutions become single points of failure.

Centralized systems are efficient, until they aren’t. They remind me of those perfectly arranged kitchen drawers that look amazing until you try to close them after removing one spoon.

For retirees, the risk isn’t that the whole system collapses (that’s unlikely) but that decisions made far above our heads can reshape our financial reality overnight:

• interest rate shocks
• unexpected inflation
• policy shifts
• currency interventions
• banking stress

Retirees don’t get a vote in those decisions. We just live with the results.

That’s the fragility Alden wants us to notice.

Bitcoin and Digital “Hard Money”: Not a Sales Pitch — A Technology Shift

Alden isn’t waving pompoms for Bitcoin. Instead, she approaches it like an engineer:
What problem does this new technology solve?

Her answer:
It offers a neutral, scarce, permissionless monetary ledger — one no central authority can inflate, freeze, or manipulate.

Will Bitcoin replace the dollar? Probably not.
Will it exist alongside the dollar in a multi-money world? Very likely.

For retirees, the point is not “Buy Bitcoin.”
The point is: the world is shifting.

Money is becoming more digital, more fragmented, and more competitive. Having options might someday matter more than we expect, especially for those of us living on savings.

The Future of Money Isn’t One Thing — It’s Many

Alden sees a future with:

• fiat currencies
• central bank digital currencies
• stablecoins
• decentralized digital assets
• and probably some things we haven’t invented yet

Money is diversifying the way retirement portfolios once did.

For retirees, this is simultaneously unsettling and empowering.
Unsettling because… good grief, do we need another thing to keep track of?
Empowering because… choice gives us a chance to hedge risks our grandparents never imagined.

Alden’s message is not that the system will fail but that it will evolve, and retirees who stay curious and informed will be far safer than those who assume today’s system will last forever.

The Real Lesson: Monetary Literacy Is a Survival Skill

Here’s where the book lands for retirees:
You don’t need to become a monetary historian, a crypto wizard, or a gold bar collector. You do need to understand:

• how inflation affects savings
• how currencies lose value over time
• how global money shifts could impact retirees
• why diversification matters
• and why “don’t worry, the system works fine” is not a retirement plan

Financial literacy is no longer optional.
It’s as necessary as sunscreen on a beach day — ignore it, and regret follows swiftly.

The system may be “broken,” but that doesn’t mean retirement is doomed.
It just means: stay awake, stay flexible, pay attention, and don’t let your savings sit in a place where the silent drip of inflation eats away at everything you built.

Final Thoughts: Retiring in a “Broken Money” World

Retirement used to feel like the finish line. Today, it feels more like the beginning of a second job — the job of protecting your purchasing power.

But here’s the optimism baked into Alden’s book:
Even though modern money has cracks, we have more tools, more options, and more information than any generation before us.

We’re not helpless.
We’re not doomed.
We’re just… responsible for keeping our eyes open.

If we understand why the system behaves the way it does, we can make better decisions. And better decisions are the heart of a peaceful retirement.

So yes the money world may be a little broken.
But so is my lower back, and I still manage just fine.

And so will you.

Don’t wait until it’s too late, get your financial house in order today!

Happy retirement planning!