Is your pension safe? Sure, until it’s not!
Do you know who manages your pension and who they work for? Most likely, the answer to both questions is “I don’t know”.
I may not know who manages your account, but I’m pretty darn sure that, when the shit hits the fan, everybody will be working for themselves. It seems kind of stupid to leave others in charge of one’s life savings.
Speaking of stupid, everyone knows that they should keep a diversified portfolio, yet most still put everything into currency.
Real estate, stocks, money, gold, silver, bitcoin, or government promises are only valued in terms of money. As such, they only make up a financial portfolio.
When money becomes valueless, these so-called assets become worthless as well. A truly diversified portfolio must contain assets that have intrinsic value as well.
Read: Can I Still Retire if the Stock Market Crashes?
While in the workforce, recovery from life’s disasters is much different from what is offered to the over-the-hill gang. In the course of one’s life, it’s common to lose everything and start over a number of times.
These experiences usually enrich lives with new careers, environments, and those opportunities that create a mature and self-assured person.
The retiree, on the other hand, doesn’t want a new career and equally, the workforce doesn’t want him either.
The goal of the retiree is to have the means to live twenty years without having to work as they did in the previous forty.
With quite a bit of luck, your business may function successfully without you until you’re gone, your pension fund may outlive you or the financial system will stay afloat longer than you, and your government and its pension system won’t collapse before you do.
Without a crystal ball, none of these scenarios is assured nor in this evolving world are they particularly likely.
Throughout life, most people do their best to insure against the financial risks of a world fraught with risks. Envision what a staggering price the average individual pays to insure against the economic threat of disease, death, disability, legal liability, property damage, theft, or of poverty in general.
Personally, I can imagine a society in which people prosper and live abundantly instead of being blackmailed by fearmongers.
My imagination aside, it seems most people will pay any price to protect the notion that their way of life can be preserved. The sad truth of this last statement is that these same people will give up everything of value to prevent changing their way of life.
Reality For The Typical Boomer
1) When you leave the workforce, your income will decline.
2) Your portfolio is never going to provide the lifestyle you’re accustomed to.
3) Your cash savings are likely to disappear through spending, inflation, bad investments, or the collapse (in whole or in part) of the monetary system.
4) That big home is most likely not your ace in the hole. The hope that it is, may be an albatross around your neck that will deprive you of the retirement of your dreams.
5) Those retirement dreams will quickly mutate into damage control. We all have a way of turning “it’s not what we envisioned” into “it’s not so bad”.
Insure Your Future – Turn Cash Into Security
Instead of pursuing unattainable goals, consider converting some or all (if necessary) of your nest egg into a sustainable way of life. There’s no time like the present to protect yourself from the vagaries of the economic and social systems.
We’ve all seen cities turn into slums and pristine neighborhoods become shitholes.
We know what inflation can do to savings. We should know that we are not immune from civil unrest or warfare.
Commodity prices sometimes wreck the budgets of old people.
Governments sometimes die and default on their obligations.
Many will follow their retirement financial plan until they are victimized and then spend the rest of their life on the porch in a rocking chair.
Prepare for the Future
Fortunately, some oldsters are woke and prepare for a future the slaves refuse to dream of.
For Rebel Retirees and others who are just naturally prudent, there are some basic rules to achieving a sustainable retirement.
Remember, the goal is to create the independent life that you dream of with the cash available to you today. Living debt free is more important than building a doomsday-prepper redoubt.
In the future, when the system hiccups, a worthless piece of land in the countryside may far exceed the value of prime real estate in the city or suburbia. Living off-grid in the country may be an adventure, while in the urban jungle, it’s a nightmare.
Read: Is Living Off-Grid an Option for Retirement?
Wherever you settle in your debt-free homestead, make provisions for food and provide value to the community.
A vegetable garden and chickens will surely make a person feel rich when the internet has a problem and the supermarket doesn’t receive its deliveries.
Read: [Free Food in Retirement] 6 Benefits of Planting a Vegetable Garden
If the system is disrupted, your unique resources or abilities will provide the trade goods and services that will sustain you and the community.
Design your sustainable retirement around your lifelong passions and dreams. Expound upon those dreams with infinite possibilities and newfound interests. Instead of fading into impoverished obsolescence, use your independence to live out your days with abundance.
Some Good Advice
If you want to achieve anything out of the ordinary, don’t share plans with or ask for advice from friends, relatives, or co-workers. They most likely will want to drag you down to that extra ordinary plane that the sheep inhabit. Additionally, if you can’t share dreams with your spouse, quit dreaming and do as you are told.