“How much money do I need to retire?”
Truly the million-dollar question that’s probably worth $10 million or more.
And there are two basic approaches I’ve seen to this question…
For funsies, let’s call them “Blue Pill” retirement planning and “Red Pill” retirement planning.
“Blue Pill” retirement planning is all about “finding your number”.
The one number that, if you just save that much, everything will be hunky dory. It’s the one true number. Your “soul mate number” so to speak.
Switching gears a bit to… the “Red Pill” retirement plan.
You’re free to reject it, spit it out, or swallow it:
There is no one number.
Financial planning is a dynamic process that changes each year.
Thus “your number” changes each year.
Thus you can’t plan for a specific retirement.
Not a highly specific one anyway.
More:
The very word “retirement” essentially means “giving up work”.
Not working is the quickest path to death, in which case… why bother saving money?
“Blue pill” planning is all about some ideal dream you’re going to live after the unpleasant grunt work of your business career is over.
“Red pill” planning is all about finding enjoyment in the work you currently do… forever.
“Blue pill planning” is all about saving money almost as an end in itself. Just keep saving it up to have the biggest pot of money possible. Then retire. Then die. Always terrified that you’ll run out of money before you die.
“Red pill” planning is about using money as a means to an end — your mission and purpose. To grow your income and savings so you’ll never run out of it, and probably end up with way more than you could ever spend in 2 lifetimes. But the goal isn’t to have the biggest pot of money. The goal is to put that savings to better and better uses to fulfill your lifelong mission and purpose.
You might succeed.
You might “fail”.
But, you’ll never be bored.
I can’t tell you which path you should take.
But I can offer you a way to “tweak” whichever path you decide to travel…
(“green pill” retirement planning?)
Instead of risking everything, you can create a safety net so no matter what happens, you win.
If you want to dive deeper into this topic, join my email list and I’ll bring you up to speed in about 5 days (give or take).