Independence Day

Issue

Most of us ‘baby boomers’ realise that government superannuation is not going to provide an adequate income to maintain the lifestyle to which we have become accustomed through the latter stages of our working life.  We also know that due to modern medicine and dietary awareness the likelihood of us making it into advanced older age has a high probability.  What isn’t clear is how best to consider these current or fast approaching eventualities.

Rationale

It is possible that we imagine or assume “we will have repaid our mortgage, sold our business for lots or accumulated a tidy sum, sufficient to supplement the pension”.  Or what I’m hearing more and more “we will both continue working, we like being occupied and busy”.

I believe that this is more a necessity than a desire.  It should read “we both need to continue working”.  Quite simply most baby boomers will not have prepared appropriately for financial independence and therefore their lifestyle will be determined by the need to generate further income from paid work.  Not as they would like to imply – from their passion for working, either on their own business or for someone else.

Last week I was introduced to a simple criterium for ‘retirement’ – a concept I think makes perfect sense and gives people the mental flexibility to describe how they might like to design their future whilst accepting the need to adjust and adapt.

‘Stop doing that which you don’t like’.  When you consider this approach it has a more positive connotation.  No one is stipulating what you should have in an investment fund or what aspect of your life needs to be adjusted due to a rearranged budget.  If you like the discipline of working 9 to 5, and all that goes with it, so be it.  If you like the idea of reduced days or hours and you can arrange that – good for you.  Alternatively if at a planned point in time or through lesser capacity you want to ‘dig the garden’ or watch TV or mind the grandchildren – then, why not.

Then again if you don’t like your boss or the travel – then things need to change, if you want to stop doing the things you don’t like.

Bureaucracy, bus and train time scheduling, road rage, parking, office politics, or you are just plain worn out, fed up or suffering from anxiety and stress – enough is enough.

Recommendation

It’s easier in life to stipulate that which we don’t enjoy rather than imagine a series of well intentioned goals and aspirations.

So write them down, and depending on when you were born (the baby boomer years being 1946 – 1964) you need to start determining how to position yourself – to stop doing the stuff you don’t like.

When you consider life in such a way – things start to become clearer.

Sure there may be a time table of necessity, things yet to do.  You may not be in a position to immediately commit to Africa or a third world country to administer advice or medicine, dig the garden or travel with the All Blacks.  However, as you consider the elimination of stuff you don’t want to do it is a lot easier to accept what you definitely need to do between today and ‘independence day’.

When might that be?

How long is it going to last – ‘independence’ before internment?

What’s it going to cost – each year?

How much will you leave behind and to whom?

As you consider such ‘sensible and sensitive’ considerations hopefully you become excited by the final third of your life.  The passion and purpose with which you live it becomes a beacon for others to aspire.  I know, when I think about stopping doing the things I don’t like or stopping the interaction with people I don’t like – it puts a smile on my face.  That has to be seriously beneficial