Life Should Be More tha Slaving Saving and Dying: Breaking Free of the Financial Factory

Sounds exciting, doesn’t it? If the financial factories had their way, you would spend your whole life as an endured servant to your 401(k), working away to save and build a nest egg with no real way out. This is the path the large investment firms need you to follow. Every story they tell reinforces the money myth that if you just follow their outlined steps, you will be fine. The problem is that the path they have outlined is circular rather than linear; they are placing you on a journey that does not really go anywhere.

The goal of this of course is to convince you to live on a perpetual investment hamster wheel. This wheel provides the factory with a perpetual income stream; an annuity of profits while you wait and wait and wait. Don’t be afraid to crawl out of the cage and forge your own path. Best of all it will be yours.

The journey of life is unique to each individual and as such a unique financial plan is required. The mega financial firms that dominate the financial planning industry spend millions of dollars to convince you that their path for your finances is the correct one, when in fact you are the only one that can determine that. Rather than simply coming up with a number that you need to retire and slaving away to reach it by a certain age, I encourage people to first determine what they would like to do when their life is no longer dependent on their paycheck. By defining a reason to save, I have found that the goal becomes more meaningful and gives a greater incentive than simply saving money for an unknowable future.

After defining your retirement dream, the next step is to assess your current situation and what your needs are. If you know you will have a reliable pension for retirement, your plan will be much different than one who does not. Also, it is important to take your personality into account. If you are a saver by nature, then you will probably feel more comfortable living on less and placing more into your savings. If, on the other hand, you have a more adventurous spirit, it may be perfectly reasonable to allocate slightly less to your retirement plan and enjoy life. We only get one time around in life and money is meant to be used to enhance our lives, not restrain it.

Financial factories view our lives as nothing more than numbers in a revenue stream and as such are perfectly content to have you enslaved in their one size fits all plan while you run in the hamster wheel as life passes you by. As you plan for your financial future, remember you should be the master of your money, not the other way around. Life is to be enjoyed and money is a tool used to enhance our experience as we go through life. With that said, I challenge you to step off the financial factory merry go round and find a financial plan that meets your needs, personality, and lifestyle. I promise your quality of life will go up, regardless of how much money you have in the bank.