In many online ads, I notice that more and more online marketers are using this interesting slogan about entrepreneurship being the new retirement plan. I have even noticed one of our very own Academy teachers also say this about his house wholesaling system training, but is it accurate? Is entrepreneurship really the new retirement plan?
A decade or so ago, many would have argued that putting money in an IRA, making smart financial investment decisions, or working for a stable company with a great 401K would yield a very comfortable retirement. I used to have a very solid 401K and profit sharing plan in the earlier stages of my corporate career, but a few years later I realized something that made me completely change my perspective on planned retirement.
The idea of retirement is to help you save enough money while you are working to ensure you have enough money to survive after you can no longer work (supposedly after 70). However, two small things didn’t sit well with me on this.
The first, was that I had no interest in waiting till I was 70 to stop working – I wanted to be done working by 40.
The second thing that didn’t sit well was that I didn’t want to just survive between the ages of 70 to whenever I died.
I didn’t care to think of a life where a monthly paycheck I received from my own previously earned money would be my way to keep myself afloat. I had never observed anyone having the lifestyle I desired that followed this strategy society had created.
The point of the whole retirement system was only to ensure you could survive rather than live well, unless, of course, you contributed much more than others and sacrificed your younger years of fun so you could live better as you got older.
I drove a Lamborghini when I was 24 and my employees who were older and almost retired used to say, “When I retire in a few years, I’ll be buying myself a Ferrari,” which made me think, “Why would anyone want to own their first Ferrari at 70? What’s the point of owning a Ferrari when you need Viagra?”
Understanding that conventional methods of financial freedom were no longer aligned with my goals and aspirations meant putting them behind and coming up with a new more valid plan for retirement. But as much as I would like to say it was entrepreneurial in nature, it wasn’t; that new plan was self-employment.
That’s right, the new retirement plan isn’t to create value or facilitate the world with new ideas through entrepreneurship, but rather to create tremendous amounts of money – enough to no longer worry about what happens after you are 70.
While many can say that such a goal is also attainable through entrepreneurship, I would argue that while both can lead to significant financial rewards, only one has an OFF switch.
What I mean is that entrepreneurs can never retire as they become unable to turn off from the idea of fixing problems and creating solutions. However, self-employed individuals can do so very easily as long as their financial well-being isn’t jeopardized or threatened.
The new retirement is basically non-existent if you take into consideration that most people who are self-employed or entrepreneurial do not follow the same path, they create their own. They are not investing in a commonly established system or measure that someone else put in place for them.
As a matter of fact, they are doing the opposite and betting against the system by finding their own means of survival and their own path to retirement at the pace they see fit.
I guess one could say that the context of retiring has now become subjective to one’s own goals or aspirations. But one thing is for sure, which is the simple notion that society is evolving past having trust in the “system,” and is starting to realize that there is no longer a set path to follow if you want to reach success or retirement, but instead, there are plenty of open fields waiting to be built on.
