The idea of retirement is completely absurd.

Think about it.

One is entitled to sit around and relax for the last twenty to thirty years of their lives?

It’s nuts.

Outside the elites, in the entirety of human history, this concept of retirement has only come to exist since when?

Maybe the 1980’s?

Some of my grandparents were retired for 30 years, but their parents would have thought the idea was crazy.

Again, excluding the ultra-wealthy, the only ones that have afforded it thus-far, made it work on limited spending and the welfare of paying very little into a Social Security program, that paid them back like a Vegas slot machine.

And that is not even the complete case.

Many of those that have been retired in peace for the last twenty-five years are living longer than they thought they would and having the issue: “Oh wait. We can’t afford 10 years of long-term care.”

You can obviously never plan for every possibility, but my advice is simple:  Work longer.

Pick that perfect retirement age and add 5 or 10 years to it, or just have more money than you possibly know what to do with.

It also solves a lot of retirement issues if you go out how they used to go out.

“When arthritis and fatigue slowed him to the point where he couldn’t move fast enough to get out of the way of a gate or a running animal, the ranchers he had worked with much of his life became reluctant to call him to help them work cattle, for fear he would injure himself; but he had been a highly respected man and they were reluctant to relegate him to an old man’s chores. Once it became clear to my father that his neighbors were right—that he was an old man who, for all his skill and experience, would mostly get in the way—he was bitter for a few weeks and then lay down and died.”

–Larry McMurtry, Walter Benjamin At The Dairy Queen