In our era of constant connectivity and content creation, you’re likely the recipient of an endless amount of advice on how to live your life: what to eat and wear, how to interact with your family, ways to get ahead at work, and, of course, rules for planning a comfortable retirement. These hacks can be appealing; they make life easier in many ways because they remove some of the decision-making burdens from your shoulders. If something goes wrong, it’s not your fault; you just did what the experts said! The problem with these “rules” is that they come from outside sources; they aren’t centered on your unique interests, vision, and priorities. As a practicing retirement planner, podcast host, and financial educator, I’m passionate about rethinking any limiting rules imposed on us as fundamental to retirement planning.
Traditionally, retirement planning has utilized this outside-in structure, leveraging simple heuristics to prevent retirees from running out of financial resources during their lifetimes. Consider guidelines like the 4% rule*, using 80% of your income to estimate retirement expenses, saving x amount of your salary by x age, and so forth. Rules like these confine your life to a box. As you try to navigate staying in the box, you’ll likely face some unappealing choices like working longer, living on less, or having more money at the end of life than you really wanted.
Support authors and subscribe to content
This is premium stuff. Subscribe to read the entire article.