Mediations #9: Retiring from The Idea of Retirement
I changed my mind and will not wait for retirement. Instead, I will focus on aligning financial investments with activities I enjoy till my last breath.
I’m not here to tell you that you should be working for a monthly salary for the rest of your life. Also, it’s not about passive income or financial independence and definitely not a promoter of a hustle culture. That’s not the main idea. The main idea is this: accept that you should do things that bring you joy AND align your financial investment for them, and do this till your last breath without stopping and relying on a monthly retirement salary. Now that is out, let’s go into why.
People tend to think, at least in Germany and Türkiye, that they will suddenly stop what they are doing after a certain age and let younger generations pay for their salary. That’s something I struggle to accept.
The problem with this mentality is that people rely on it too much. They postpone their lives today and restrict themselves from doing what they want. Take me as an example. My retirement day is practically at least thirty years ahead. Until recently, I have been acting like my job was a disease that will go away in the future. I believed if I put in the effort, I could retire earlier. It was like a drug addiction.
However, I was addicted to being in my comfort zone. I was afraid of discovering what I wanted to do every day. I also knew I would work to make it happen if I could chase that. But, as I avoided that daunting task, I let myself slide into the comfort of being a hard follower of the system. I researched retirement mechanisms. The solutions I found were focused on making my retirement better or earlier.
The system is built well in Germany, where I live. All employees and employers have to pay a mandatory pension contribution. There are also government incentives to invest more—to increase my retirement salary. Yet, all of these force me to stay in the system. They don’t even want me to look outside. The system is all I need, and as long as I stay inside, I’m “covered.” But actually, I’m not.
First, the system is facing struggles. The system is resilient enough to survive for decades with so many patches around it. However, as the world population ages, the system will eventually be overhauled. As the young generation is less interested in paying for the elderly, has less trust in the system, and wants to live in the moment more instead of getting delayed gratification, they don’t opt-in to the system. This shift alone puts the system under heavy stress.
We see new ideas and brave plans to solve the issues of the existing system, like universal basic income. However, as the minimum wage always falls behind the current prices, basic income will fall behind, too. People with basic income will have to work their whole lives to cover ever-increasing prices. This brings me to my second point.
The retirement system is not too old, actually, albeit it feels like an eternity. We don’t need to go too far. Thanks to Otto von Bismarck, Germany introduced the first old-age insurance program in 1889. Simply put, my father’s grandfather didn’t have the retirement option. He worked until he passed away. Although he probably had tons of problems, he never thought about retirement. He tried to raise kids who would look after him when he was old. That was the method back then. Now, we have replaced kids and relatives with government entities and private companies to provide support for old age.
The government providing this service helped people focus on other things beyond survival and getting enough kids to support them. At least, in theory. Similar to the idea of a basic income, when we added the retirement system, it wasn’t enough to support anyone’s dreams. It partially removed the necessity of having kids. Right now, in most cases, pension income is barely enough to provide food and shelter. Thus, people have to work toward having enough savings. Then, when they retire, they can maintain their standards (whatever they are). The system doesn’t aim to give you a comfortable retirement life.
The system focuses on getting more out of you while it can (when you are younger). So, you work more, save up as much as possible, and join additional retirement initiatives—bringing more economic value. The system wants you to contribute more at the cost of your time. That brings me to the famous Seneca.
He says, “In guarding their fortune, men are often closefisted, yet, when it comes to the matter of wasting time, in the case of the one thing in which it is right to be miserly, they show themselves most prodigal.”
We waste our time like it’s an unlimited resource. It’s not new to anyone that life is actually short and can end anytime. From this perspective, investing in retirement that will come in 30+ years and sacrificing living fully today sound unreasonable.
Seneca continues, “Can anything be sillier than the point of view of certain people—I mean those who boast of their foresight? They keep themselves very busily engaged in order that they may be able to live better; they spend life in making ready to live!”
To me, sacrificing today to invest time for retirement is literally what he says, “…spending life in making ready to live.” So, how do we stop wasting time and begin living? First, we need to find out what “living” means.
It means having a purpose and accepting that time is limited. It means deliberately choosing what to do and what not to do rather than allowing others to steal time from our lives. Contrarily, retirement means you have found and fulfilled that purpose; it means you’re done. And that’s where I struggle.
For me, the purpose of life is searching for that purpose. That’s the job. The chase, the utter determination in the effort of search, the relentless seeking. It forces you to adapt to the changing world, not build expectations for the future that one day all struggle will stop. It demands training like an athlete for that purpose, enjoying the time with an ever-changing priority list. It asks you not to lose time with seemingly innocent but utmost time-wasters like Facebook, Instagram, or the latest news. It invites you to make the journey more enjoyable by building things that matter—like real relationships with family and friends and community around rituals—and seeking timeless ideas. To be able to do all, it also tempts you to make the journey safer.
This is where the government incentives and financial investments come in. The journey can only be safer with a flexible financial investment strategy. Instead of relying only on forty years of commitment to retirement schemes, the aim should be to build a portfolio to cover unfortunate events and have enough savings to cover detours during the journey. Building this portfolio is easier said than done. Learning where to invest always starts with a goal. Once the goal is set on making a safer journey, the rest is another journey—making mistakes and learning from them.
All moments, directions, decisions, steps, or detours are part of the main journey. All of them are expeditions full of surprises. However, once we focus on having the journey rather than setting a goal, life becomes more manageable. Even though some actions might be similar to those who work for their retirement, we can choose the activities we enjoy today, not those that drag us, and align our money to build a safer passage over high mountains.