Do I want to retire or...?
“Do I have enough money to retire?” is not the most important question to ask about tomorrow.
Yet, this is the question that consumers are trained to focus on when they consider what their future holds. Fear that they will “not have enough” drives them to financial, retirement and investment professionals who concentrate on the financial aspects of traditional retirement. But there is a more important question to ask yourself in the 21st Century, “Do I want to retire?”
Retirement is a concept from the 1880s which evolved into the 20th Century period of uselessness and lack of purpose. Also known as being put out to pasture, retirement means cutting the cord with the business world and mainstream living, to remove one’s self to a quite less demanding life. For most people that does not describe the future they have in mind for themselves. Retirement, once a handful of quiet years before death, has been replaced with decades-long extended living which continues as many aspects of mainstream life, including income earning, as desired and adds many more dimensions of self -exploration.
Before you can decide the financial requirements, it is essential to determine how much you want to leave behind and how much you want to explore. Your home and other real estate can be financial partners in unretirement if you take the time to decide how they can provide income and make other valuable contributions to security and satisfaction.
More thoughts on this subject in Chapter One and the following article from my ongoing column “Decisions & Communities":
Retirement Planning: Not “How Much Is Enough?” But “How Much is Too Much?”
Yet, this is the question that consumers are trained to focus on when they consider what their future holds. Fear that they will “not have enough” drives them to financial, retirement and investment professionals who concentrate on the financial aspects of traditional retirement. But there is a more important question to ask yourself in the 21st Century, “Do I want to retire?”
Retirement is a concept from the 1880s which evolved into the 20th Century period of uselessness and lack of purpose. Also known as being put out to pasture, retirement means cutting the cord with the business world and mainstream living, to remove one’s self to a quite less demanding life. For most people that does not describe the future they have in mind for themselves. Retirement, once a handful of quiet years before death, has been replaced with decades-long extended living which continues as many aspects of mainstream life, including income earning, as desired and adds many more dimensions of self -exploration.
Before you can decide the financial requirements, it is essential to determine how much you want to leave behind and how much you want to explore. Your home and other real estate can be financial partners in unretirement if you take the time to decide how they can provide income and make other valuable contributions to security and satisfaction.
More thoughts on this subject in Chapter One and the following article from my ongoing column “Decisions & Communities":
Retirement Planning: Not “How Much Is Enough?” But “How Much is Too Much?”
Home equity is the market value of a homeowner's unencumbered interest in their real property—that is, the difference between the home's fair market value and the outstanding balance of all liens on the property. The property's equity increases as the debtor makes payments against the mortgage balance, and/or as the property value appreciates. In economics, home equity is sometimes called real property value.Technically, home equity has a zero rate of return and is not liquid. Home equity management refers to the process of using equity extraction via loans—at favorable, and often tax-favored, interest rates—to invest otherwise illiquid equity in a target that offers higher returns.
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