If Monday’s post didn’t spur you to start early, this one sure should!
First, here is something that will upset you if you are already 55 and figure that you need another 10 years to retirement:
Not bothered?
Well, let’s see if we make the same comparison, starting with a much earlier retirement age:
If you used to think that a lifetime of work was good for you, think again – this chart [AJC: the blue line is the important one] shows:
The longer you work, the shorter you live!
From another article:
Generally, it is found that people retiring early live more, but how long do they live? Or what is the average number of years they live after retirement? Well, now 49-50 is usually not considered to be a retirement age in most countries. However, if a person plans everything well and retires at the age of 50, he is expected to live for at least another 35-36 years, which increases the life span to almost 85-86 years! People retiring in their early 50s, normally live up to their late 70s or early 80s and people retiring at their early 60s, live till their early or mid 70s.
We had a pretty important reason to aim to Get Rich(er) Quick(er) i.e. so that we could have the time and money to finally live our Life’s Purpose …
…. but, if you don’t have a clearly defined purpose, then let me give you just one real clear, real simple reason to get Rich(er) Quick(er):
If you retire before 50, you will live 20 years longer than if you wait for normal retirement age.
No longer is the idea that “business/investing is too stressful … I’ll just wait it out in my nice stress-free post office job” valid …
…. I don’t care whether you intend to retire with $1 million or $10 million, as long as you reach your Number much sooner than you otherwise would.
By reaching my Number at age 49, I not only gave myself the gift of finally having the means to truly live my Life’s Purpose, but I also gave myself the gift of 20 years extra in which to live it …
… this, too, is my gift to you.
Don’t waste it!
AJ: I am having tons of issues loading your website. I have to hit refresh like 5 times until I see something.
This has been happing for a couple weeks now.
I use Chrome if that has any impact.
Any others having similar problems? I use IE and FireFox w/o issues …
I use IE with no issues. Occasionally the link from PFBlogs does not work – but the link from my own blog does.
In blunt terms – the message is that the sooner you retire the longer you can expect to live and the quicker you reach your number the sooner you can retire.
Of course, Plan B involves retiring now and sending mrs traineeinvestor back to work. However, while this looks good in theory, I’m pretty sure that if I try to implement this plan it would actually shorten my life expectancy. 🙂
@ TraineeInvestor – I would expect, dramatically so! 😛
I use Firefox, and so far no issues.
Now on to this post . Its quite telling, and I believe it has lots of merit, as I have seen many of my friends(and relation) who worked to retirement age(to never live long enough ) to collect that retirement money.
Now, on to you Adrian. Have you really retired? or are you still working in your current business(es)?If your still working ,you may not have added all those years. Working Part time? maybe you added some. I don’t know how it works(if you need to retire fully)before retirement age ,or if you can still work part time and still add years.
I try to avoid I.E. as it is too much of a target with those viruses.Firefox does get targeted,but to a much lesser extent.
Hi AJC,
Very interesting post. So these two variables are correlated but does that imply causation?
For example, many people who retire at 50 may be ex-military as they get a pension earlier in their career. These people may be more fit and that is what is extending their age, not the fact they are working.
How do you get causation out of this? There may be another factor that is causal?
-Mike
@ Steve – If ‘work’ implies ‘busy’ then I am working at least part-time: house rehab, two condo projects (200+ condo’s between them), plus I am still mucking around with some startups, and I do have one existing business left. But, it sure doesn’t FEEL the same as when I had my multinational business-empire-in-in-the-making going => so far, MUCH less stress …
@ Mike – If so, I’m just dying to find out! 😉