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You’ll Retire 3 Times in Your Life
And there is no reason to be 65 for any of them
“Retirement starts when you stop sacrificing today for some imaginary tomorrow,” philosopher Naval says. That’s one way to look at it.
Another is that “retirement” is this vague, distant, supposedly rewarding thing meant to happen at the end of your life, and even though you actively plan for it, it feels too far away for you to grasp it.
You can see your pension contributions on your pay slip each month. You can check how much you’ve saved and how much it’s growing. Maybe your total projected payout even looks like an “I won the lottery” kind of jackpot that’ll unlock when you’re 65.
None of this, however, changes the fact that retirement is a long way down the road, and that’s why it feels strange, unfamiliar, and maybe even unimportant to think about it. Trust me, it is not.
As a self-employed writer, I think about it all the time — but I also make jokes. “What do you mean, ‘after graduating?’ I’ll retire, of course!” Lately, however, I started seeing a kernel of truth in all my early-retirement jokes.
I’ve only been an entrepreneur for six years, but looking back on my journey, I can see some clearly marked points after which I felt freer than ever before. Isn’t that what…
