The “$400 Trillion Time Bomb” and “An Unnatural Act”

Quartz, the digital global business news publication, recently published an article entitled “The world is sitting on a $400 trillion financial time bomb.”

Solid fear-inducing stuff, this reporting.  Globally, we are going to be short on retirement savings by a mere $400 trillion (with a “t”) by 2050.  $137 trillion in the U.S. alone –   once again we lead in a dubiously distinctive category.

And it’s all because of an unnatural act.

The unnatural act is the “R” word that pervades our psyche like no other – retirement.

From the moment we start our first job – and often even before – retirement becomes a subtle, silent partner in our thinking and many of the decisions we make.  As we move through our 40’s, 50’s, 60’s it takes a progressively larger share of our mental bandwidth and decisions, with anxiety over a false premise at the core –  a concept based on an arbitrary, unnatural, artificial, politically-inspired finish line.

Were we really meant to do this?

I’m sorry, but I just have difficulty getting my head around the idea of a creator/universe that would equip us with all the chops and opportunities to wind ourselves up and then not be miffed when we decide to wind it all down and throw it all away based on an irrelevant number.

Do we really have a reasonable rationale for its existence in the form to which it has evolved – that is, vocation-to-vacation, off-the-cliff from work to leisure.  And at an age, determined by politicians,  that has no relevance today because we are living longer and had even less relevance when established.

The average life expectancy was around 58 when the magic number of 65 was set.  As some have pointed out, it set the stage for the greatest Ponzi scheme ever.

Can we agree that retirement, as we’ve come to define it over the last 100 years, is an unnatural act?  Where do we see it in nature? We don’t see it in the animal world.  We didn’t see it in the human world either until the concept of “social security system” emerged in the late 1800’s when Chancellor Otto von Bismarck injected a version of it into the German economy, primarily to stave off a threat from Marxism.

Not to be outdone, we Americans took the idea, over the course of the 20^th century, to the sublime and entrenched the idea of leisurely final chapters so deeply in our psyche that it drives many of our major life decisions  – many of which end up being harmful.

Disagree with me?  Check the collective cortisol level in this country when the stock market slides 5 or 10%.

Yet, in the face of damning statistics of shortened lifespans, we push forward with fury, fervor, and fantasy in the pursuit of that nirvanic leap into leisurely bliss.  Then, once achieved, we discover too late that our biology doesn’t hold up well when unchallenged physically and mentally.  And anxiety levels increase as we fret over outliving our money.

I often wonder what our world today would be like if Michelangelo, Socrates, Newton, Einstein (pick your own intellectual, pioneering hero) would have had a 401K/403B to distract them.

Five stages of retirement – proceed with caution.

Ken Dychtwald, the founder of AgeWave, is the foremost thought leader on issues related to aging.  His organization has done extensive research on retirement, using a database of over 50,000 retirees.  They concluded that retirement has five stages:

1. Imagination – 5-15 years before retirement
2. Anticipation – 5 years before retirement
3. Liberation – retirement day, anticipation realized. Average duration: one year
4. Re-orientation – 1-15 years after retirement. Critical life questions surface; post-partem depression is common; growing concerns about health and finances; boredom; unstimulated
5. Reconciliation – late 70-80s; trying to come to terms with who they really are; friends and family dying; money concerns intensify; concerns about legacy

Click this link to see Ken’s talk at the American Society on Aging Conference in 2013 for a more detailed presentation of the research starting at minute 26:00 of the video.

I’ll bet you know someone in stage 4 or even stage 5.  Hopefully, you see this in time to avoid either.

Don’t be in a rush to give your parts back

I love the quote from one of my favorite virtual mentors, Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach.  In my 12/18/17 blog, I referred to comments he made on retirement in one of his “Exponential Wisdom” podcasts with Peter Diamandis.  In addition to referring to retirement as the “ultimate casualty”, he also emphasized that “stopping and retirement means you are ready to retire your bits back to the universe.”

I’m in no hurry – are you?

Suggestion:  Don’t participate. Don’t retire

To quote the article:

“Financial disaster is looming, and not because of the stock market or subprime loans. The coming crisis is more insidious, structural, and almost certain to blow up eventually.” (my underline)

So now we’ve got a $400 trillion dollar impending apocalypse to layer onto our worries about N. Korea, climate change, ISIS, nuclear threat, Trump, #metoo, etc., etc.

It’s becoming quite a “chicken little” world.  CNN is salivating.

But, participation is optional.

There’s much “gnashing of teeth and ripping of robes” about how we avoid this latest disaster.  But no one, interestingly, suggests not retiring.  Imagine that!  Rather it’s all about extending retirement ages/finish lines, increases in taxes or cuts in benefits.

The retirement mindset really does seem to own us.

Call me idealistic; call me arrogant; call me pollyannish; call me what you like (and I know some will) but I’m not going to participate in this prediction of our eventual demise.  I could lie and base my non-participation by claiming to have all the retirement savings I need to avoid being blown up. Truth is, I don’t – it’s not a number I think about because I jettisoned the idea of retirement a decade-and-a-half ago.  I’m going to work until I can’t and am confident the money will be there to support my lifestyle business.  I sense more and more others are opting out as well.

Have you looked up the word?

Do you agree that creative marketing and opportunistic financial services and leisure industry, uncontested by a greedy political system, have created the illusion of turning something that means “retreat” or “withdraw”  or “to disappear” into a positive, dreamy even?  Marketing so effective that we now believe that going backward is a positive movement.

Isn’t there something fundamentally wrong – and unnatural -about that?

Perhaps I’m a voice in the wilderness, but I don’t think so.  What are your thoughts?  Scroll down and leave a comment (or salvo, as the case may be!)