MC #6 – Retirement [3 pages]

More than half of Americans stop working because their body prevents them from making and keeping promises effectively, strategically or competitively enough to earn a high income, or any income at all. 

If spouses don’t have enough money saved and invested by the time their body stops working, or by the time they are 60 years old, they are virtually certain to be forced into poverty as soon as they run out of money, which means they can no longer afford their homes, cars, health care, food or family visits.

What is poverty? 

Poverty is having too little money to afford the goods and services everyone requires to take satisfactory care of their most fundamental human concerns (listed above and at the end of this essay).

What is the result of poverty? 

Pain, suffering, isolation, illness, despair and early death

No home.

No car.

No healthy, fresh food.

No health care.

No family visits.

And this is why we say that facing poverty during old age is one of the most serious breaks in either spouse’s vows, unless it is the result of a catastrophe beyond their control.  Spouses have 40 years to get their earnings and spending under control so that they avoid poverty in their old age.  To the extent they are too immature and irresponsible to manage to save and invest enough money, the likelihood of divorce increases.

*   Breakdowns and distrust around the domain of money is one of the leading causes of divorce.

According to doctors and gerontologists, age-related infirmities that prevent people from working or competing successfully for high incomes begin to appear at age 60.

Everyone needs money to transact for the goods and services that everyone requires …

… to take satisfactory care of their most fundamental human, financial, career and business concerns

… in order to survive, be free and live a good life.

As we grow old and our bodies are unable to work in exchange for income, we lose our capacity to generate money with our bodies.  These are facts.  Without money, or the capacity to transact with others, we will die.  None of us can take care of our concerns by ourselves.  No couple can do this either.

Throughout our working lives we generate income in order to transact for products and services we cannot produce for ourselves.  When we get older, no matter what our age, we must still be able to transact for what we cannot produce for ourselves, or we will die.  Of course, as we grow older, we can produce less and less for ourselves.  Our needs may diminish somewhat with some concerns.  With other concerns, however, we become even more needy, frail and vulnerable.

The universe is indifferent to our existence, our comfort, our satisfaction and our lives.  Anyone who has been to science classes knows that the universe is the harshest of environments and anything but the human race’s friend.  If anything, its indifference is out to kill every one of us. 

We are not due anything from the universe. 

We are not entitled to anything. 

No one owes us anything, especially other people or the universe. 

Our bodies are indifferent to our concerns as well.  They are biological mechanisms.  Our bodies grow old whether we want them to or not. 

In the past or in other cultures, people are forced to rely on their children to care for them during their old age.  In these cultures children are a retirement account.  Couples have as many children as possible.  They have them start working as young as six or seven to provide for them.  When they get too old, they expect their children to fulfill their duty to support them.

In our culture, in industrialized cultures, children have stopped being an asset on a family’s balance sheet.  Now, they are a liability couples must be able to afford, which means people have to make money to have children, rather than have children to make money.  As this transition occurs, the birth rate slows as children actually become a luxury to afford.  They are no longer a necessity, or money in the bank.

Without children as a retirement account, we must have something else to support us when our body can no longer work.  Our country’s philosophy about private property rights means that we have the option of accumulating things, such as money, other financial assets such as stocks or bonds, or real property such as land, gold or diamonds. 

We can sell our real property for cash.  We can lend our financial assets or real property in return for income.  We accumulate assets over time through saving and investing. 

We accumulate capital by putting our capital at risk.  Assets do not accumulate automatically.  We are always at risk of losing them, which means we need skill in order to accumulate them.

Part of growing old and preparing for retirement as a couple in an ambitious marriage is to accept the facts of life and prepare to cope with them.  One of the commitments we must make in our culture as a couple with ambition is to learn about and prepare for the time when we need an alternative to our work for producing income.  Preparing for our inevitable retirement or death is one of the virtues of an Ambitious Marriage.