Don't Panic, You Can Have It All - Just Compromise

After a long day at work or during a heavy work day, have you ever asked yourself, “do I really need this? Am I really going to work like this for the next 30 – 40 years? Why am I putting myself through all of this just to pay the mortgage for a big house and all the bills needed for an overinflated standard of living?"

We all have the ability to control our destiny, but most fall victim to feelings of powerlessness due to our own excess.

When we are young, we don't really think about what it means to work for 30-40 years? We don't consider what our health will be like once we retire. We don't consider if we will even be able to retire at 65 or if we will have to continue working because we didn't save enough.

I once asked my 13-year-old step-son what he thought happened when you retire. He said, "the government pays you the last salary you had for the rest of your life." I wish...

In the Beginning

_{Photo by Clark Tibbs on Unsplash}

Early in life, we are told to be serious, to get good grades, and go to a good college. In college, we are told to be serious so we can get a good job, and make a lot of money. Once we have that job, we are told to be serious so that we can advance up the corporate ladder, and earn even more money so when we retire, we can live the life we have always wanted.

Sounds like we are being asked to push off our real lives to save for a potential life that may never come.

How Much Time Do We Really Have Anyway?

In 2015, the average life expectancy in the United States was just under 70. This is much lower than I expected, which is kind of concerning if you ask me...

But, back to my point. On average we spend 1/3 of that time asleep. If you use simple math, and 8 hours per night, you find that most spend just over 23 years asleep. That is amazing and I don't like thinking about it! 23 years asleep! What a waste of our precious time!

So, if our life expectancy is only 70 and we sleep 23 years of it away, we really only have 47 years' worth of time available.

But really, that is not true. In the US, we are required to go to school at least until we are 16 but most continue on until 18 when they graduate from high school. During that time, we are mostly dependent on our parents to make decisions for us. We gain more and more independence as we get older but we are not fully independent until we are considered adults at 18. Until that time, most of life's experiences are dictated to us by our parents.

So, that is another 12 years (outside of sleeping already included) we need to remove leaving us 35 years when we have full control over our life choices and the experiences we set for ourselves.

But, that is not the full story either. What about college? If we continue on with your education, through college, we are looking at another 6 years on average. During that time, most of us are told to buckle down and study hard. We are told that our effort will allow us to build a better future, so work hard now and play later.

Again, this represents at least another 4 years (minus sleep), if not more, that needs to be removed. Once we graduate, we have roughly 31 years of our life left where we can truly live. Now, at last, our lives can really begin, right?

Well, what about our career? We graduated from college for a reason right? Now we are expected to get out into the workforce to find our career and get it moving. No time to wait. We need to move up that corporate ladder so we can build out our nest egg for retirement. From about 25 until the age of 65 we work. That is 40 years which is roughly 14 years' worth of continuous work time, and that is only based on working 8 hours a day, no weekends, with only 2 weeks of vacation per year. Most work considerably more, however.

If you remove the14 years of work time, we are now down to 17 years of time that is truly ours. At last, we now can use that time to really live. That is still a lot of time we can use to really experience life.

But, we forgot something, up until 65, we forgot our weekends. Those 2 days represent about 11 years of time over those 40 years. Also during those same 40 years, we have to consider we have other responsibilities such as caring for others, household chores, eating and drinking, going to the bathroom, yard work, etc. On average, most people get about 2 hours a day to themselves. For most, however, that 2 hours is not all at once. That also includes those weekends. This is especially true if you have kids or parents you need to take care of as they get older.

Removing those 11 years from the equation, we are now left with roughly 5 to 6 years left to live our lives.

Retirement

We forget though, we might not be able to retire at 65. We might not have earned enough or saved enough to stop working. Then what?

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I read somewhere that most people spend five years or less at any particular job and on average, transition between 10-15 times during their career. Think about that, if we each change jobs 10-15 during our lifetime, we will spend a lot of time and energy transitioning from one job to another. If there are any gaps in employment during those transitions, we should expect it to affect your ability to save for the future. If that happens, it might delay when we can retire or change the standard of living we were hoping for when we do get to retire.

All that sounds like too much of a risk to me. I don't want life to pass me by and have nothing to show for my 70 years of existence. I want to have lived life, had great experiences, traveled as much as possible, and done everything I wanted to do so I came up with a compromise.

My Path

I never followed the path my parents subscribed to or wish for me. They hoped I would find a job, stay there for 40 years and then retire. That was never for me. I realized early that if I wanted more from my life, I had to do something different.

I didn't get my first 'real" job until I turned 29. Don't get me wrong, I had plenty of jobs before that time but never a job I considered a career. Most of those jobs helped pay the bills but I didn't care about any corporate ladder. I went to college and then graduate school, during which time, I also traveled, learned to scuba dive, rock climb, mountain bike, and got married.

I took many risks with my future by living in the moment. I am sure my future is not as secure as others but I am equally sure I have lived more of a life up to this point compared to others. I will not look back on my life with regret. I took the risks in life that are worth taking. To me, the biggest risk is waiting for a future and the security you hope is coming because of the hard work you put in over 40 years. Let's face it, faith is a risk. We have no idea what will happen in the future. I would rather live now and have less in the future, then save now and watch it all disappear and have nothing to show for it.

The one expression I have never understood when I meet people while traveling is, "this is once in a lifetime." To me, that says, "I need to keep working for tomorrow. I can only do this once for now." Life is about compromises. If you want to have experiences now, know you won't be as comfortable later and be OK with it. If you want to see the world now, know that later in life you might have to travel closer to home. If at the end of the day I don't have as much when I retire and I can still look back on my life and remember all the great experiences I had, it will all be worth it. If I look back on my life with regret, it won't.

_{Photo by Clark Tibbs on Unsplash}

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