MANY children in secondary school have been exposed to enough stories in the press or social media about young adults, merely 10 to 20 years older than they are, who have made it big in business at the tender ages of 26 to 38.
Typically, such inspiring reports, articles or online posts tell true stories of how those whiz kids sold their companies or patents (or both) to much larger concerns for obscene amounts of money — Himalayan mountains of cash so high that if the successful entrepreneurs choose to never work again, they can safely retire early… and permanently.
As hundreds of millions of secondary school kids read about the (mere) hundreds of such super-successful individuals, our teenagers are often inspired — by these true, yet incredibly rare accounts of early super-success — to set personal goals like these: "I will retire before the age of 35," or "I will never need to work for money beyond 40."
All of us who are old enough have encountered kids who articulate such dreams, just as we probably did during our callower years. Indeed, many of us of different ages today have also harboured such fantasies.
However, most older adults, after decades of being battered (and batted about) by life's turbulence, grow eager to set our youngsters straight about their expectations.
It was the English novelist George Orwell, author of classics like 1984 and Animal Farm, who penned this grim observation:
"Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise."
Think about it: Malaysians take pride in the relative safety we enjoy here. Sadly, though, in recent years there has been an uptick of hate speech, intolerance, and bigoted rhetoric emanating from powerful people who should know better. Tragically, such negative developments seem to be sprouting up in other countries, too.
So, as we hope and pray that humanity edges back away from the precipice of hatred and violence toward better times, those of us who are older should help those younger than us face the world not merely as they assume it to be but as we know it is.
And as we share with them our — hopefully welcome — hard-won advice, we may often discover we have inadvertently rained upon their respective "parades" because our experience tells us that:
1. Life is generally hard, not easy;
2. To retire early is unlikely; and
3. To toil — in some capacity for desperately needed money — well past the official retirement age of any country is the norm, not the exception, worldwide.
PROMISE OF BETTER DAYS
Since I keep close tabs on global retirement trends, both out of personal interest and to better advise my clients, readers, audiences, and friends, I know all three statements are true.
So, I urge all of us who regularly dish out the same grim warnings to youngsters to be aware that our well-intentioned pronouncements often have these unwanted effects on the significant juveniles in our lives:
1. Our cautionary warnings convince them that the old fogies (us) who tell them retiring early is immensely unlikely are totally out of tune with the tremendous opportunities available in today's marketplace for ideas and innovations; or
2. We demoralise them and crush their confidence in their own potential and thus cause them to stay on "the roads more taken" and settle for mediocrity.
Neither outcome is helpful.
For progress to persist, people need to continue to believe in the likelihood of better days ahead. As 19th century American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote in his dramatic poem Michael Angelo:
"Dreams or illusions, call them what you will,
They lift us from the commonplace of life
To better things."
SPEND LESS, SAVE AND INVEST
So, how might those of us who are older give more pragmatic feedback to the important-to-us young people in our lives? Specifically, those who trust us enough to share their — often — outrageous dreams without having us extinguish those cherished aspirations.
More specifically, how do we build them up and not tear them down?
Here are three suggestions for you to test-drive:
1. Acknowledge that we all deserve to rest at key points in our lives — we just need to first pay the price to afford to do so during short breaks;
2. Admit that we all must also recuperate for longer periods at various junctures of life, perhaps every half-decade, during lengthy vacations, which should be paid for with earned money and not through debt; and
3. Confirm that attaining a comfortable retirement is possible for us all, but usually only after three to five decades of diligence and wise money management.
In a nutshell, all of us, young or old, deserve to rest, to recuperate, and to eventually retire. However, the respective bills, be they sooner or later, must be paid.
By us!
So, the best and often only way to pay those bills is to spend less than we earn, save and invest the difference, and to do so for a long, long time.
© 2024 Rajen Devadason
Rajen Devadason, CFP, is a securities commission-licensed Financial Planner, professional speaker and author. Read his free articles at www.FreeCoolArticles.com; he may be connected with on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/rajendevadason, or via rajen@RajenDevadason.com. You may also follow him on Twitter @Rajen Devadason and on YouTube (Rajen Devadason).