The Banker

On Retirement, From a Millennial’s Perspective

A thoughtful reader sent me this Time Magazine article, with musings on retirement written by a 24 year old.

The first question the article prompted: Is Time Magazine still around? I had no idea!

Anyway, the next set of questions posed by the article are worth contemplating:

1. Why does a rational 24 year-old decide to put away retirement savings? Stated another way, how can someone like me best convince a 24 year-old of the extraordinary opportunity for wealth-creation by starting to save for retirement now? (I know my answer has something to do with teaching compound interest, my obsessive-compulsive favorite topic.)

2. With the decline in private pensions and (possibly) the future insolvency of Social Security, how much should individuals expect to be responsible for their own retirement?

3. In retirement, should the goal goal be to live with similarly-situated seniors, or rather a mixed up community of all ages and styles? (I know my own preferences at this point, but who knows how I’ll feel later.)

4. Is the point of retirement to do nothing except pursue leisure activities? Or is it possible to find passionate work that one can do, regardless of the compensation? (I know that’s my conclusion in this post.)

An author-acquaintance of mine – age approximately 75 – once told me his thoughts on retirement. “As a writer, how could I ever retire? Who would I even tell? Who would care? I’m just going to keep on writing.” I’m attracted to that type of passion about one’s work.

That never-retire view actually seems to be the conclusion of the 24 year old author, whose solution to the work and retirement questions – so far – is to just write magazines article for the next 60 years and never quit.

Which is kind of hilarious, since a 24 year old should know that magazines probably only will be around for another 2 or 3 years. But what do I know? I could be wrong. I had no idea Time Magazine still existed.