Are you young enough to retire?

Bob Goldman

You’ve been waiting forever. Is today the day you finally do it?

Let’s check the calendar.

Do you have a big meeting today? A critical lunch? A major nap break in the supply closet that you simply cannot miss? “No.” “No.” And “Maybe.”

If your calendar for today is a big black hole, I have a suggestion.

Make today the day you retire.

Sure, you’re not at retirement age, whatever that may be. (Don’t ask Warren Buffett. He’s 93 and counting.) What’s important is that you’re still young — and isn’t that the best reason of all to grab the first HR nerd who will listen to you and say, “I quit. I quitty-quitty-quitty-quit-quit-quit”?

All that remains is turning in your card key, your parking pass and your collection of embarrassing T-shirts from the 75 motivational off-sites you have attended, and off you go. In one swell foop, you’ve achieved the dream: early retirement.

If you’re honest, retirement has been on your mind since the day you started working.

Way back then, traditional retirement age was 65. After climbing the org chart and slipping into the sweet C-suite lifestyle, you’d celebrate your 65th birthday by making a speech or three, and the company would send you off with a fancy gold watch and a basket of RSUs.

Today, they send you off with a 100-page NDA and an ironclad noncompete. As for the watch, forget the gold Patek Philippe. You’re lucky if you get a plastic Timex and a spare battery.

Considering today’s puny retirement packages, you won’t be surprised to learn that many workers no longer expect or even want a traditional retirement.

According to “You Should Never Retire,” a “Bartleby” column in The Economist, “almost one in three Americans say they may never retire.” Are they delusional? Are they crazy? Are you? “No.” “No.” And “Maybe.” Either way, if an early retirement still remains a goal, realize that it will take a lot of work — the kind of effort usually associated with the young. Here are three reasons why the question today is not whether you are old enough to retire; it’s whether you are young enough.

No. 1: Retirement is more work than work.

One good thing about having a job is that “What should I do today?” is never a question you have to answer. Without a manager to tell you what to do, making these difficult everyday decisions requires youthful energy, unless, of course, you have a helpful partner who will provide a daily to-do list or you own a parrot.

No. 2: Expect to start generating.

Your goal in retirement will be to become the type of employee your company wanted you to be when they hired you: a young, energetic big-idea generator. If you don’t want an early retirement to lead to an early grave, you’ll have to generate decades of big ideas to keep you busy — and breathing.

To put it bluntly, you have to think out of the box, unless you want to end up in a box.

No. 3: It’s foolish not to be foolish.

Given the endless years that face the retired young, it’s definitely a time let your freak flag fly, especially when planning retirement activities.

Some retirees switch from companies that can’t make money to charitable nonprofits that don’t try to. Admirable, but it does sound like work. Better to put 100 percent of your efforts into a foolish hobby, such as amassing a major collection of Hummel figurines or collecting museum-quality examples of paper clips through the ages.

If you do decide to go all-in on a foolish retirement goal, make sure it is not too foolish. There’s nothing than can shorten an early retirement more than the decision to fulfill your long-time dream of hang gliding off the top of Everest.

Can’t decide whether you are young enough to retire? Consider a retirement that does not involve leaving your job. You still go to work. You just don’t do any work while you’re there.

Retiring from work at work lets you doze through the day and when it’s quitting time, step briskly into the world with zero responsibilities and no obligation to ever return.

Of course, If you’re working from home, you will have to return, but don’t rush back. Take a walk. Buy an ice cream cone. Pick a comfy park bench and curl up for a nice, long snooze. If your early retirement plans blow up, you may be sleeping there regularly, and it would be good to get some practice.


Bob Goldman was an advertising executive at a Fortune 500 company. He offers a virtual shoulder to cry on at bob@bgplanning.com.

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