So how long must I keep working? That is the question that almost all pre-retirees ask themselves. I struggled over that question as well, being one of the many people who have been in the same job for many years and really couldn’t wait to do something else. But what if money wasn’t the real issue? If you could live on substantially less money and be happy, wouldn’t that be even better? We all fool ourselves into thinking that without a steady job making a certain amount of money, we would fall apart and be driven into bankruptcy.
There is a trend that has been ongoing now for a few years at least called FIRE – financial independence retire early. This trend was probably started years ago by someone unhappy with their job and decided to do something about it! What if we could really quit our jobs after a few years of hardcore saving, investing, and frugal living? It’s not only very possible, many people are doing exactly that right now, especially as the world has undergone many challenges since the great pandemic of 2020. For someone who has only been around this life for 20-30 years, the world must certainly seem like a very scary and crazy place right now. For those of use who have been around for over 60 years or more, we have seen our share of crazy shit already – but these times still seem pretty crazy, even to me! It appears that during the pandemic, most first-world countries borrowed trillions of dollars in order stave off completely economic meltdown as most citizens either couldn’t work or were forced to stay home due to Covid.
Once the pandemic started to become less severe, especially after the vaccine was given to millions of people, things got a little better for a while. But the vast sums of money that the government borrowed caused huge problems with inflation, and even though the job market was quite good after 2021-2022, there were dark clouds on the horizon. The stock market has tanked about 20 percent over the past year, so that was almost a given. Then the housing market started to crash, and this didn’t help people that were already teetering on the edge of losing out big from the previous year, some of course due to bad choices made and others due to bad timing. Will it get better?
Yes, I think so. Looking back in time, the stock market and housing market always recover eventually. When is the question though. So really, the time to retire is all up to you – how dedicated are you to saving money and investing it into the right financial vehicles to get you at the place you need to be? This the most important question and one everyone needs to take very seriously if they ever want to actually quit working someday. Unless of course you don’t mind working until you’re 80 years old, which I doubt very much!
Planning for your retirement can be tricky, and there are questions you have like everyone else. If you want to learn and explore more ideas for yourself, check out my book here for more information: