Financial Freedom in the Information Age: Is Retirement Even Possible?

If you’ve never heard the depressing statistics about retirement, you might be interested to know that over 95% of people never get to do it, and of the other 5%, only 1% ever get to retire in comfort. When I first heard this, I believed what all the financial and motivational gurus said: that most people never got to retire because of poor financial planning. However, after years of working as a life coach and helping people achieve financial freedom, I’ve come to realize that the problem isn’t with the people, it’s with the concept of retirement itself. In this article, you’ll learn why retirement is not only impossible for many, it’s also a poor goal to set for oneself...

The Fundamental Problems With Retirement

My biggest problem with retirement has always been that it comes far too late in life. If you really want to quit working, doesn’t that suggest that you somehow don’t like what you’re doing for 40 to 60 hours a week? So you’re working for 45 to 50 years, doing something which doesn’t fulfill you, just so that you can hopefully stop one day? What a brilliant way to dangle a carrot in front of people and encourage them to invest their money in the stock market and in mutual funds and to hope that someday these investments will provide them with the financial freedom to enjoy their life....but only when they are old and have far less energy than they used to have.

But that’s just the start of the problem. The other major problem is that retirement for many is a luxury which they never get to experience. Many people stress out over working the job that they don’t like, so much that it causes them to become physically ill. After all, medical statistics show that the most heart attacks occur in the early AM on Monday mornings. Doesn’t anyone else see what’s wrong with this picture? So why put your head down and enjoy your life only on the weekends while hoping that someday you’ll be able to pay off your debts, put your kids through college and finally retire?

Why not start looking for a better solution?

Financial Freedom Can Start Right Now

Instead of putting off your financial freedom and enjoyment of your life till the end, why not develop a lifestyle where you can sprinkle more times of rest and relaxation here and there in the form of what Timothy Ferriss calls “mini-retirements?” This might have been impossible a few decades ago, but now the new rules of wealth are making this easy. All you need is freedom of mobility, freedom of time and financial independence (aka, living without dependence on debt and credit). Achieving this lifestyle isn’t hard, I’ve been doing it for two years now and life has never been better.

However, the first thing to learn is the new rules of wealth and how to use them for achieving financial freedom in the new economy. Once you learn these, you can stop chasing the dangling carrot of retirement and start living your life on your terms starting right now.