I'm going to perform a small magic trick here at Your Smart Money Moves. I am going to help you reduce a huge amount of stress with the wave of my magic wand. I want to officially retire the word 'retirement', and poof there it is - gone! Now, you don't have to worry about what date you have to retire.
According to Webster's dictionary, the word retirement means "to withdrawal from one's position or occupation or from active working life." The etymology dictionary (www.etymonline) traces the word retirement back to the 1640's. Germany was the first country to make the word somewhat popular in the 1880's. The United States didn't really start thinking about the world retirement until the 1930's, and you didn't see the term 'retiree' in our vocabulary until 1945. Now, the word retirement means many different things to all walks of people in the United States. In the financial services world, it is the calculation of your number. The number of dollars you need to make all of your dreams and visions come true about what you want to do when you don't go to work anymore.
We have worked with over 1,000 people between the ages of 25 to 50 years old, and I'm here to tell you and the financial services companies in America that retirement is not a word that makes sense anymore. People are living longer. People want to stay active for the rest of their lives. People want to have a balance of having fun today and being fiscally responsible for tomorrow. People want the freedom to be able to make their own choices. People don't want to wait to see the world until they stop working. People won't work for the same company for thirty years. For these and many reasons, oXYGen Financial and Your Smart Money Moves are on a quest to recreate a word that fits the modern working society we have today.
We often hear comments like work optional, work flexible, and even F.U. money. You know . . . that amount of money it would take to be able to tell your boss those few choice words you've always wanted to say without the fear of losing your job. Now, woptional probably won't be a word that makes it into Webster's anytime soon, and fumoney sounds more German to me than it does English for some reason. If don't think a word can become meaningful to us, just thing about games like Yahtzee, and Jenga which are odd sounding words yet they create images of the game quickly in our heads. I do know, however, that just like Google was an unknown name 15 years ago, it today represents our number one word when we are going to search something on the internet. Out there somewhere is a fresher more descriptive word we can all use to express what it means to feel financially secure enough about your future that you have the freedom and independence to what you want to do irrespective of cost.
I don't know what the word is yet, but I know it has to change. Most clients we talk to aren't interested in hanging up the boots forever some day. There's a passion for many people today of making ongoing contributions to the world while also spending time seeing the world as a continuum in their life with no real stoppage point of work. So go ahead and wash that word retirement up because you probably will never stop working. Instead, you'll put yourself in a position to do things on your terms where you call the shots. Won't that be grand?
Written by:
Ted Jenkin, CFP®, AAMS®, AWMA®, CRPC®, CMFC®, CRPS®
Co-CEO and Founder oXYGen Financial, Inc
oXYGen Financial, Inc. co-CEO Ted Jenkin is one of the foremost knowledgeable professionals in giving financial advice and Smart Money Moves to the X and Y Generation.
Phone 1.800.355.9318 or 770.777.0427
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