How long should your retirement last for you to feel it was worth sacrificing for?
My own parents have been retired for 27 years, and while they are not now in good shape physically or mentally, most of those 27 they've enjoyed. To earn those 27 years of freedom, they first had to spend 35 years toiling in the vineyard (i.e., w*rking and raising children). I expect they would say it was worth the long sacrifice to get those good years in RE.
I've known other people who retired after a long career but were cut down within a year. If I could contact them by Ouija board, I wonder if some would say something like "My retirement was so short I barely felt it. If I had known I was only gonna live six months, I wouldn't have bothered retiring. I'd rather have died in harness so my widow would have collected more life insurance."
I'm trying to understand more fully the narrow path we tread between what we think is a reasonable exchange between our servitude and our independence. Perhaps this is a question better posed to Zen students or economists than to current and future retirees, but this is the forum I'm on so I'll pose it here anyway.
I know that we aren't the masters of when we meet our Maker, but I'm not asking how long we will choose to stay alive. I'm simply asking whether, on our deathbeds, we'd feel shortchanged if our retirement turned out to be less than some minimum duration.
ETA: How come it didn't attach a poll?
My own parents have been retired for 27 years, and while they are not now in good shape physically or mentally, most of those 27 they've enjoyed. To earn those 27 years of freedom, they first had to spend 35 years toiling in the vineyard (i.e., w*rking and raising children). I expect they would say it was worth the long sacrifice to get those good years in RE.
I've known other people who retired after a long career but were cut down within a year. If I could contact them by Ouija board, I wonder if some would say something like "My retirement was so short I barely felt it. If I had known I was only gonna live six months, I wouldn't have bothered retiring. I'd rather have died in harness so my widow would have collected more life insurance."
I'm trying to understand more fully the narrow path we tread between what we think is a reasonable exchange between our servitude and our independence. Perhaps this is a question better posed to Zen students or economists than to current and future retirees, but this is the forum I'm on so I'll pose it here anyway.
I know that we aren't the masters of when we meet our Maker, but I'm not asking how long we will choose to stay alive. I'm simply asking whether, on our deathbeds, we'd feel shortchanged if our retirement turned out to be less than some minimum duration.
ETA: How come it didn't attach a poll?
Last edited:
).
