Yeah, its very different now. My grandparents idea of retirement was a paid off home in the suburbs with a new Cadillac in the garage and some occasional travel. My parents have nearly the same idea with some golf carts and golfing involved. Me? Yeah No. My retirement is shaping up to be on a Hallberg-Rassy (or similar) around 55-feet with a Williams Minijet parked in the dingy garage running between the windward and leeward islands dodging hurricanes in the Caribbean. Not sure why our outlook is so different now but expectations have certainly changed. They valued security more than we do. We value experiences more than they did.
The nihilistic view is that we haven't changed so much as we have been manipulated. The 80s was a time when huge debt to keep up with the Joneses was normal. This trend has continued to this day. We aren't as "simple" because advertisers have on staff psychologists who are paid to find new ways to part us from our money. There's also the economic impact. We live in a debt based culture. If everyone in America, for example, decided to save 45% of their income a year the economy would collapse. Debt is the necessary driving force in currency creation. Without idiots taking out payday loans and floating mortgages the rest of us would suffer. This kind of dovetails into "experience culture". We've basically been manipulated into thinking we should be like the jetsetters. This gets doubled and tripled when you consider majority of people spend their time on social media where these things are actively advertised. Pair this with more millennials and Gen-Z'ers realizing social security won't be around, wages will never catch up, and boom-bust cycles are so frequent that you can't even catch your breath, of course people are going to chase "experiences" rather than build wealth. Why even try? The system is rigged for all but the elite. After reading The Millionaire Next Door several years ago my entire philosophy on what it means to "retire" has changed. For starters, it's unlikely I will be able to retire at all since I will need healthcare and it is very expensive here. But for the sake of argument, we'll call "working a little just for healthcare" the start of "retirement" since in theory I could get an adjunct position somewhere and cruise control for healthcare. I think the most important take away for me was the idea of generational wealth. I'd rather own a paid off house (or two, so I could rent one), paid off car, and no debt. This matters so much more to me than anything else. With these things out of the way I've essentially built the beginnings of generational wealth. Since as long as I decide to live in the states I won't be able to retire until 66-1/2 (even though I'll definitely have more than enough money before then) it's likely I won't get to spend any of my money. To me, this is fine. As long as my family is taken care of and they're in a good-to-great position by the time I die then my job is done. The only thing I have to do is make sure they don't squander the opportunity on "experiences" and instead use the leverage to make even more. Then, repeat the cycle until the family is absurdly wealthy. It takes a dozen or more generations making good decisions for your family itself to achieve a higher status. But for my family, it's going to start with me.
Is below a fact? I don’t remember coming across anything that stated that Livermore called himself a failure. Jesse Livermore was one of the richest men in the world in 1929. By 1934 he was bankrupt – again – living off the money his wife saved from a previous marriage. “I am a failure,” he wrote, before shooting himself in a New York hotel.
Do you ever wander if that would be a dis-service to your kids? I think one of the best feeling is knowing that you started with nothing/little and achieved something on your own. I see parents frantically trying to increase their children’s chance of “success.” Usually it involves money and connections.
Healthcare was mentioned. Absurd, chaotic, U.S. healthcare hangs like the Sword of Damocles over virtually everyone living in the U.S., except for the very wealthy and those who manage to reach the age of 65, where the risk of financial ruin is slightly less. Even then the possibility of loosing the bulk of one's estate to the medical black hole remains, unless one takes action years in advance of a serious/chronic illness to thwart the financial disaster that potentially awaits nearly all of us. Lack of a reasonable healthcare system is the number one reason why young people at the beginning of their careers should emigrate to another developed country. America will remain broken until its ridiculous healthcare is fixed. No one understands medical billing, and no one can understand it. The only exception being plastic surgery, which remains untouched by the for profit insurance industry. Imagine you went to the grocery store, but no one had any idea of what anything cost. When you checked out at the cashier the cashier could not tell you what the charges would be. The bills for your purchases would arrive piecemeal over a period of weeks to months later.
I dunno, I don't have kids at the moment. I think you make a valid point. This is also covered The Millionaire Next Door. Often times vast fortunes are left to kids only to be squandered. I think there are ways you can influence their success without corrupting them. For example, having a college fund set aside, some money for their first home, etc. Things that get them a leg up in life itself. I don't really believe in giving them anything of pure value like hard cash. Just a few things to give them a chance to focus on whats more important (getting and keeping a job). Yes despite all my shit talking about Obama he did one thing - removed pre-existing insurance surcharges. I was one foot into Europe in 2009 because after I lost my parents healthcare I was looking at almost $1,100 in coverage per month. I am fortunate for this because the ability to prosper in America is really incomparable to any other developed nation. It's just unfortunate we have to deal with this. Despite making extremely good money for my age, owning a home, and saving a lot of money, healthcare is and will always be my biggest fear. Even with my assloads of voluntary insurance (which is stupid) that includes things like accidental hospital stay coverage, accident insurance, etc one heart attack or a bad car accident will likely consume 2/3 or more of my net worth. I will be fortunate to keep my house in that case. The person you are referring to is me, yes, and it is a shame that I will have to work more-or-less until I am almost dead in order to make sure I have health coverage as I age. This is the one place where I am completely diametrically opposed to both conservatives and libertarians. There's very little any American do. When rated, healthcare damage is the biggest concern of every American polled every single time. Yet, neither democrat, nor republican is willing to do anything about it. It transcends public cost data. If they were smart they'd throw us this bone and 99% of America wouldnt say anything for another 10 years. Healthcare is a scam. It's like options except the trader is also the market maker AND the participants willfully allow them to frontrun.
Actually pretty much all the research on happiness has shown that once you reach something in the $75-$100k income range (obviously adjusted for cost of living where you live), those who spend their money on experiences are happier than those who spend their money on things. Obviously each individual has different things that make them happy, so your plan may very well work well for you and I would never try to dissuade you from it. But it's not universal and those who don't share that viewpoint aren't necessarily nihilists/fatalists, they're actually just pursuing the track that has been shown to be more likely to lead to more happiness. As an alternate way to look at it, I raised my kids on experiences. As they graduate from high school they've traveled around the world, learned how to sail, fly, dive, survive in the woods and the jungle (at least for a few days!) and have a solid basic education and more importantly a huge amount of intellectual curiosity. That's all due to us spending our money on experiences rather than things while they were growing up, or if we did buy things it was things that provide the ability to have more and richer experiences. I firmly believe my children are far better off even if all I cared about was their ability to build and have wealth (which I actually don't) than they would be if I'd forgone all those experiences to save money. And I don't have a regret in the world for "squandering" my time and resources on experiences. It would be my definition of failure in life to die with lots of money and a bunch of things left I wanted to do, that's squandering the one thing we can't make more of, time. Moreover, I managed to become a successful entrepreneur after 20 years in the military, so I ended up with plenty of intergenerational wealth anyway. What would have been horrible to me is if I had spent those 20 years foregoing hundreds of once in a lifetime experiences to scrimp together what, $500k, only to come to the point later on where that was a completely insignificant amount for me but the loss of 20 years was irreplaceable. Just another perspective, not necessarily the "right" one because there isn't really a right one.
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