Warning for anyone who is lucky enough to be in a position to retire or cut back to part time early.

Do not wait. There is a vast world of experiences and opportunity beyond what your career can provide. And no, you will most likely never see age 95 or 100. Even if you did, the odds of you wanting to be alive at that age are even more slim.

In the last few years, I have seen a disturbing number of mass media content (Ie propaganda) centered on “do you have enough money to retire if you live to be 95? 100?” etc. I’m combination with state level efforts to raise the retirement age, the goal appears to keep us generating yield for the masters until we die.

Note, chronological life expectancy does not tell the whole story. What matters more is useful life expectancy. This is how long you can live independently and able to do the things you want to do. While chronological life expectancy has increased slightly over the last several decades (until Covid took a bite out of it), useful life expectancy has been much more difficult to assess and is pretty much not studied at all.

Central to this is, is that it remains extremely challenging to perform academic research without financial support these days. This is entirely by design as sufficient funding can usually only come from industry now, which then sets the agenda and narrows the scope of any planned studies that could jeopardize the status quo. This is to say nothing about the fact that editorial narrow networks are always hard at work shaping whatever message is big brother approved. Academic institutions have been nearly fully captured by industry as have federal research funding sources like the NIH (to an even more striking degree).

So please, do not fall for this trap. Do not sacrifice your functional years in your 40s or 50s for an employer when the promise is for shitty “trust me bro” years in your 80s or 90s.

If you are in a position to get out or even just cut back to part time, do so. You will find an incredible world out there waiting for you. You may even find time to think for yourself which is the most dangerous and infectious thing a person can do these days.

#grownostr

#thinkdangerously