Cheat Death. Enjoy Life Now.
Is it better to save for a retirement at age 50 or beyond or to take a series of mini-retirements throughout your life? Over at Get Rich Slowly, J.D. wrote a post about mini-retirements that includes an interview with Timothy Ferriss that got me thinking about how I approach my own life.
Many personal finance bloggers hold up as their ideal “retirement at 50,” but Ferriss calls himself anti-retirement. He suggests people try to give themselves refreshing and relaxing mini-retirements of a month or longer throughout their lives. First, he argues in the interview, there’s no guarantee you’ll live long enough to enjoy your retirement at 50, or 64 — or whenever. “There’s more risk in postponing the things that you would most like to do for 30 or 40 years versus taking a perhaps sub-optimal, less-compounded return on investment because you allocate some of that to these mini-retirements,” he notes. His anti-retirement view reflects that voiced in Generation Ageless, which reported surveys and trends that suggest that Baby Boomers are not going to take “retirement” as we traditionally think of the period. Instead, many will keep working at a slower pace, become self-employed, drop in and out of the workforce, and/or do more volunteer work.
I’ve been saying for the last few years “I want to live ‘the life I’ve always wanted to live before I die’ before I die.” Which means saving the money and making the time to do personally significant things now. I’ve been fortunate enough in the last few years to realize some of my dreams: I’ve worn a mask in St. Mark’s Square during Carnevale in Venice, ridden a camel in Rajasthan in India, owned two iguanas, published a fantasy novel, and run a fiction magazine. These trips and pets and projects involved time and expense, both to get to the point where I could consider them and then to actually do/own them, but they were all well worth the effort. My next goal is a visit to Japan: I’m saving up money for a trip in 2010.
Now, I haven’t scored a copy of The Four-Hour Workweek yet, so I don’t know what kind of audience Ferriss is addressing. However, it seems to me that having the liberty to take mini-retirements is going to be reserved to the upper-middle and upper class in professional fields, or maybe to the self-employed. I don’t think the average Wal-Mart or office worker can afford the option of taking a month or more off work every few years, either financially or temporally. Which is too bad; the average U.S. employee now works more hours than Japan, which we used to hold up as the workaholic extreme: “well, we may work a lot, but at least we’re not like those Japanese salarymen.” Japan was, after all, the country that coined a term for “death from overwork” (karoshi). But now “Americans work more hours a year than employees in any other industrialized country, and earn just 12 vacation days a year–three of which they don’t take,” according to an article in CNN’s Money. And, the article notes, overwork is leading to health problems.
I’m fortunate enough to have a job where mini-retirements are offered every seven years and, to some extent, in the form of winter break and summer vacation, although you wouldn’t know it to look at all the job-associated work I’m doing on my summer “vacation” this year. 
I’m also fortunate enough to have a job without a mandatory retirement age. If I wanted to teach until I dropped dead in front of the classroom, I could, as long as I remained mentally alert.
So I agree entirely with Ferriss. If you can somehow afford to do it — a big if — you should take time off and do some of those things you’ve always dreamed about doing. Because you could get killed in a car accident or die of a stroke at any time, in which case all that money in your 401(k) and IRA won’t do you any good. I’m not saying don’t save for retirement — I think that’s essential. But also put some money aside for your dreams. The only guarantee you get in life is that you’re going to die. You might as well make an effort to die without regrets.
drupagliassotti @ May 30, 2008