Roger Whitney sure is the Retirement Answer Man. Not only does he have his own personal finance blog and podcast focused on retirement, but he’s also a CFP®, CIMA®, CPWA®, and AIF®. That’s a lot of designations, so he knew he’d be the one to turn to chat about retirement planning.
Now, Roger has a very interesting story. I definitely encourage you to watch the video I’ve included below where he goes more in-depth about his background, but for the Coles Notes version, Roger is so passionate about educating others about retirement planning because of his mom.
You see, he was raised by a single mom who worked tirelessly to provide for her family. Her plan was to work hard today so she could relax and enjoy life in retirement. Unfortunately, she passed away at an early age and was never able to experience that quiet and calm retired life she always dreamed of.
Roger believes you shouldn’t work hard today for a better tomorrow. You should work hard today for a better today, and a better tomorrow. The traditional idea of retirement is that we all work hard and save as much as we can so that once we retire at 65+ we can finally enjoy the fruits of our labour.
But that’s not realistic, is it? Not one of us can predict how long we’ll live, or if we’ll be physically able or healthy enough to have that perfect retired life we see in all those life insurance ads in our twilight years.
That’s why it’s time to chuck that old idea out the door and replace it with a new one. One new idea would be to do mini-retirements as Roger and I discussed.
Instead of holding out to travel the world in retirement, why not take a year off from work to travel now, then go back to work after? My friend Stephanie Williams, who was one of my first podcast guests, does this every six months and I know more of us could be doing this too.
+ show Comments
- Hide Comments
add a comment