My cynical view is this is just another 'work until you drop dead' article. The variation here is that by being FI we can go without any government or charitable assistance when we are between jobs or need to update our skill set. Then we can continue being good little workers once we get the new improved job.
The CFP that we used last year forcefully projected the "financial independence" message in our discussions. I've come to understand it, in retrospect, as a cop-out and otherwise indefensible effort to steer the conversation away from what we wanted assistance with and toward something that the CFP could more readily claim they're providing.
There are a few bits of the article that I take especial exception to:
But they continue to work because they think they'll find more satisfaction by staying in the game and contributing to society rather than living a life of leisure.
Society is best served by having jobs filled by those who actually need to earn income to pay their bills and secure their future. Society is not served by people working jobs that effectively do little more than increase the worker's estate upon death.
studies have shown that if people aren't engaged in volunteerism by midlife, they won't be engaged in it during retirement.
I challenge the author to present the full data, including the causes. Hint: If the studies don't exclude everyone who work long past retirement age because they need the money, and don't stop working until health prevents them from doing anything substantial, then the author's comment is patently deceptive, shining more light on the author's intent to deceive than anything substantially related to the topic the author is discussing.
In the not-so-distant past, people worked at physically demanding jobs until the day they died.
The unanswered question is whether the author is attempting to communicate the message that that's the way things should go back to being? If not, then why raise the issue? If so, then why not be upfront about it?
Financial independence is a much worthier goal than traditional retirement.
False. They're both worthy goals. And moreover, the former helps achieve the latter, but that does not mean that the latter is not a worthy goal, nor in any way legitimizes marginalizing the pursue of the latter.
That said, I am on career path number 4, in my 'who moved my cheese' career path. Each career built on the other in some way, so I'm still doing work I like.
I'm in my second career, having left behind my first career after realizing that even at the top (and I was pretty close to the top of my field), with all the money and power, it was still a miserable existence. That's not to say struggling to make ends meet or worrying about running out of money before we die is a picnic.
