#297 Ready Set Retire on Flipping America Radio

Published: Oct. 14, 2019, 1:31 a.m.

Where do you want to be? In a few years? In 20 years? The future is a funny thing. We are simultaneously on the way to it while preparing for it. And if you don’t watch out, we spend so much time in the preparation, we forget to enjoy the little things along the way. Today we are going to talk about retiring. I’m going to share with you how to plan for your later years with on-going income and enjoyable activity levels. I’m also going to address those of you who think it’s too late - you are destined to spend your older years pinching pennies. And I’m also going to tell you why discontinuing all work a bad idea, in my opinion. No discussion of the future is complete without a consideration of the present. If you are unhappy now, it’s unlikely you will be magically happy then. If you are frustrated or bored with your life now, it’s very likely this will continue. The answer is NOT in a change of circumstances someday. The answer is in changing your mind TOday.

We must learn to enjoy the meaningful moments of this life as they threaten to pass you by. And pass you by they will. You can never hold on to the moment, but time is a force that marches on. Physicists tell us there are four primary forces in nature, gravity, electromagnetism, weak nuclear and strong nuclear. But TIME is a stronger force than all of them. We have found ways to experiment, modify and overcome the four physical forces, but we have never (and I think WILL never) learned to overcome time - to stop it, slow it, travel backward in it, accelerate forward in it. Time marches on. The moments continue to pass no matter how much we cling to them. New time is constantly being created at the same pace regardless of our yearning to more quickly get through certain phases in our lives.

A discussion of the afterlife or even previous lives for that matter is WAAAAY outside the scope of this show, but one thing we can all agree on: We have this life. And we have choices about what to do with it. Some of those choices may no doubt be influenced by whatever you believe about what comes next. But it is a choice nonetheless.

So let’s make some good choices. They won’t be the same for all people but they can all be good, wise, prudent, and effective. We just have to start making them.