Don’t Retire. Seriously. Here’s Why.
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We got ourselves another retirement crisis. Are these happen all the time? Yeah, story after story, year after year. I actually did a deep dive in old columns of mine. The amount of stories I’ve covered like this. Nearly one in four Americans over 50 are delaying retirement due to economic concerns survey fines. Older Americans are kicking the can down the road on retirement over concerns about the economy and their own financial readiness to step back from work.
Can I be brutally honest with everybody right now? This is my opinion, okay? Take it for what you will. Retirement’s stupid. I’m sorry. Retirement, not a fan. Again, it’s conventional wisdom, okay, nowadays, modern conventional wisdom, and we always talk about conventional wisdom being poison, is yeah, you work for X amount of.
decades and it used to be you’d have a pension, then you’d have a 401k, then you get your social security, and then you were supposed to retire, give you a gold watch, whatever it may be. Anybody actually ever do any sort of study on this, whether or this is actually even good for human beings? Maybe we can get Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to look into this with this whole maha thing. Retirement, for crying out loud, it’s a new concept.
my friends, yeah, it is a new concept. I’ve written about this before, started, what was it like 1880 something, 88, 89, Otto von Bismarck there introduced the first old age social insurance program in Germany. And the initial setting for retirement was 70. And people were dying well before that, okay? At that point in time, again, it was 18.
89. The UK started it in 1908. Their initial thing was 70 as well. They reduced it to 65. And we here in the United States started in 1935 at 65 years old. Look throughout history.
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Yeah, I mean, the Roman Empire, if you served in the legions, they would give you land, they would take care of you, give you some sort of pension system after 20 years of military service. Pretty much in medieval Europe, you would retire and then you would go and go to a monastery. You go and work in a monk, you become a monk, you would study religion. I’ve written about this, talked about this before. I said that, you know, we need to start recruiting.
People that, okay, they want to finish their career. work at, I don’t know, work at Johnson & Johnson for a period of time. And, you they’re working in a laboratory. You know, maybe they want to retire from Johnson & Johnson, had enough. Why don’t they recruit them to go teach chemistry class in a high school somewhere? Even if they’re only teaching one class a week. It’s a hell of a lot better than getting some 22 year old that’s got an education degree like Dr. Jill Biden teaching the class. Why don’t you get somebody who’s an actual chemist to teach the kids?
They might get even a little bit more interested in the subject for crying out loud. Somebody that’s actually done it and been passionate about it their entire lives. I’m just throwing this out there, okay? Don’t retire. Don’t do it. Unless, again, I’m gonna give a little quick caveat here. Okay, some people are able to structure their lives when they retire where they’re actually keeping themselves busy all the time.
What happens? What happens? What happens? You start, you work out your entire life. You just stop going to the gym.
what’s gonna happen to your muscles. I’m sorry, okay. I’ve been in this business for a long time and I’ve been saying the same thing. Maybe I gotta be a little bit more blunt. My retirement crisis white paper that I did several years ago, I made the suggestion for people to say, hey listen, I get it. You worked whatever job it may be for a couple decades, a couple decades and a half, three decades.
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Then you want to retire, you want to move on. Yeah, take a little time off. Take a little bit of a sabbatical, whatever it may be. But then get yourself back out there. And you don’t have to work five days a week. Work three days a week. I call it the Thanksgiving week, work week. And Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving is on Thursday. Most people don’t work on Friday. Do that every week.
You’re gonna be in a much better position mentally. You’re gonna be a much better position physically and I know I’m gonna get the people say yeah Well, you’re not cheesy for you to say well, what about people that are roofers and what about people that are plumbers and all this stuff? I’m like I get that I Understand that certain jobs are physically demanding and there’s gonna be a point in time You’re not gonna be able to do them, but that’s just meaning to check out on life You’ve been a plumber your entire life. You can’t go teach at a vocational school
Find something else to do. mean, again, it’s going to be better for you. You know what the kind of thing is? I don’t know why I’ve hated it my entire life. Quick story. My grandparents, grandfather worked for General Electric up in Schenectady. After he retired, after a period time up in Army, they moved down to Florida.
Port Richey, New Port Richey, and we used to go down there all the time. was pretty much, that was it, was just retirees. And it was depressing.
To me, it’s depressing. Oh yeah, well can play golf and I can go fishing. Oh, that’s great. You can still golf and you can still go fishing, but you can also still really contribute to society. Give me a question. Do you think that, you know, God really wants you to check out after all the knowledge and all of the things that you’ve done in your entire life to say, hey, you know what? That’s it. I’m hanging it up. I’m just going to golf and fish all day long.
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I’m sorry, I know this is, being brutally honest with people here, but I think retirement’s bad. I really do. I think unless, unless like I said, you got, you can structure your life and you’re disciplined enough where you’re going to have, you’re going to be doing something every single day.
To me, you know, it’s like a death sentence. I will never retire. Hey, you ever take a look at, you know, truly successful people? I don’t know if it’s any field. Well, Michael Jordan retired. He retired from basketball. He didn’t retire. You understand the things he does, the businesses that he runs, the charities that he does? Shaquille O’Neal, Mick Jagger. The Stones are bloody going on tour.
Does Mick need any more money? No, Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, I can go right on down the list, Mario Gabelli, any sort of field. Now I get it, I do understand. I do understand, again, your capacities diminish, okay? Surgeons, doctors are not able to do that, but you what you can do, you can go back and teach.
You can do something else. You can still contribute because you have a lot to offer. All these people out here, one in four Americans delaying retirement, delay it for good. Okay, it was a construct. It was a construct put together. And again, I don’t agree with the construct. It was dumb from the get-go. Yes, should we help people that are down, people that get injured, all of these things.
But now it’s like set in stone now. say, no, I can’t raise the retirement age. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. my God, this looks like we’re being bad. Throughout history.
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throughout history until Otto von Bismarck in 18, let me get the exact date. Yeah, 1889, okay, everybody just kept working. Watchdog on wallstreet.com.
