In-Life vs. End-of-Life Retirement

You’re allowed one retirement in life. A single opportunity. It’s like having one dart to hit a bullseye when it’s the first time you’ve played the game. Most people miss. A few fortunate souls hit a triple 20. Many of us do well enough, hitting a 17 or 18 or 15. But many of our retirement darts land in the single digits, and quite a few miss the board completely, living a lonely existence in a small apartment, subsisting on a meager social security check, most of which is spent on medication. Our retirements are precarious periods, and by no means guaranteed. This is End-of-Life Retirement. The curtain call. Those last few years dedicated to rectifying a lifetime of regrets but without the energy of our younger selves. By no means are end-of-life retirement sad affairs, but they’re rarely as rewarding as the one we imagined. Still, with modern medicine and social support systems, our end-of-life retirements are considerably better than what our ancestors were afforded.

While our end-of-life retirements are addressed throughout this book, the main focus will be our in-life retirements. Periods of time from a few months to a few years where we forgo the traditional cadence of life. Times where we can explore our passions or try to make a living from our hobbies, where we can dedicate ourselves to getting fit or spending more time with our kids. Unlike those that espouse extreme early retirement or creating passive revenue streams, in-life retirement acknowledges that we’ll most likely have to re-join the workforce. That these are just breaks in life where we have an opportunity to not just imagine, but to do.