32. Redefining Retirement

When I mentioned the word retirement to you, what comes up for you? Are you scared? Are you excited? Are you thinking that's never going to happen? Are you wondering what the heck you're going to do with your free time? So One of the things I find over the years and started way back when I was working on my master's degree in psychology, was that so many people have extremely different definitions of retirement is. I remember I asked somebody what their definition of retirement was, and this gentleman was 29 or 30 at the time, and he said his definition was helping his clients find the right financial service products for their families and being able to enjoy life while he did that. He said, Wait, I'm already pretty much retired. I'm grateful for the life I have. I'm doing good, doing well. I'm enjoying what I do, so I'm pretty much retired. Now, other people have the definition that goes more along of, Well, wait, I'm going to do a job I really don't like for so many years, then eventually, when I'm older and can't move as much as I used to be able to and can't jump as high, I'm going to stop working and I refuse to work anymore, and that's it.

That's all I'm going to do. Well, there's some in between. There's a lot of in betweens. What I'm going to invite you to do is to join me here and hopefully enjoy this little look at how you can redefine what retirement is in a way that's not only more easy to enjoy, more easy to attain, but will allow you to be in the process all the way through and enjoy each step of it. Which of these retirement plans would you rather live out? Plan A, when you're 20 years old, you're working 50 hours a week at this job, and let's say you're making 16.16 dollars per hour, and so you're making $40,000 per year. And let's just say to keep things simple, that that's for your 20s, they're 20 to 29. I know it doesn't exactly happen this way, but we're going to go with some math to make it simple. So in your 20s, you're making $40,000 a year working 50 hours a week. In your 30s, you're worth more. You become more skilled, you're more intelligent, you're a knowledge worker. Now, to be really clear, if you're somebody who does physical labor, you might not have skills that are worth more as you get older.

Maybe you will, depending on what you do. All depends. Let's say you're worth more and you're working 50 hours a week. Now you're making 50,000 per year in your 30s. The trend continues. In your 40s, you know even more and you're able to make 60,000 a year in the same amount of time. And then in your 50s, you're making 70,000 a year. So you make this money and by the time you reach your 60 s, you say, That's it, I'm done. I'm retiring at age 59 and 364 days. I'm not working in my 60 s, so I'm done. I'm not making any more money. I don't care that technically I'm probably worth more now. And again, this depends. If you're a laborer, a physical laborer in your 60s, 70s and 80s, you might not be worth as much. But again, it depends. Maybe if you're running the crew that does the labor, as opposed to physically being able to do what you did 20 to 30 to 40 years ago. But so this is plan A. And if we do the totals here, you've worked a total of 100,000 hours throughout your life, and you've made $2.2 million throughout your life, and you're averaging $22 per hour.

Plan B, you say, You know what? I got a different idea of this. I want to have more free time when I'm young, so I'm going to work less time. And in fact, I'm really pursuing this because I also realized that what I'm going to be worth per hour is going to get higher as I get older, and I'm going to be worth more later. Right now, when I'm younger, my time isn't worth as much because I don't know as much. I'm going to keep my expenses light, and so I'm going to work 32 hours a week for the first 30 years of my life. Then I'm going to slowly drop it down. But I also noticed something, and I've watched this with clients, ex clients and friends of mine, I've seen so many males that retire that have the income. They've met that definition of retirement, which I think everybody wants to hit, which is that I can afford to retire. They hit that definition and they officially retire. They close their business and they're bored because for 40 years they've run a business, they've done things, they've made things happen. Now there's not as many people to hang out with because most people are working.

Even if you're in your 60s or 70s, a lot of people, if they're able to do the work, they're doing something. Maybe they're volunteering, but maybe they might be working as well. This person says, I'm just going to work less hours progressively. In my 60s, I work 20 hours a week. My 70s, I work 16 hours a week. I'm working less hours, but I still want to do something because, again, my hourly income is going up. And look at that. I'm going to make the same amount of income over this time. But more importantly, I'm going to get to enjoy 18 hours a week more when I'm younger. 18 hours per week, I'm going to enjoy my youth. So I'm also going to have a higher average hourly income because I'm making the same 2.2 million dollars, but I'm doing an 86,000 hours instead of 100,000 hours. I know 86,000 hours doesn't sound too appealing, but I've got the same total lifetime income, a higher average hourly income, so I'm freeing up 14,000 hours. Again, those are real hours. 14,000 less hours work. Let's say an average work day, I decided, okay, seven hours is an average work day.

I really work about seven hours. I'm making the math easy for myself here and hopefully for you. That's 2,000 less days. That's 40 years. If you work 50 days in a year, or excuse me, 50 weeks a year, that's 40 years of taking Fridays off. 40 years. That's 2,000 days. That's almost six years of additional free time. So this is a chance for you to decide, wherever you are in this process, to determine, how deep do I want to go into this. And to be really clear, I love my work. I love doing this. I just know that for me, if there's 168 hours in a week, which there are, 32 hours a week is about 20 % of my total life. That's plenty for me. If you go to about 42 hours a week, that's like a quarter of my life. I don't need to work a quarter of my life for 30 % or 40 % of my life. I'm good. So for me, 32 hours a week, I'm still contributing, I'm a responsible adult, I'm paying my bills, but I also have more time to volunteer, to spend time with my kids, to give back.

So this is not about being lazy. This is about realizing that maybe there's other things that you can be doing with your life other than only working. And maybe after you've done 32 hours a week of something, you say, You know, that's enough. I'm going to go do something else this week that is a more diverse experience of life and learn more and experience more and do more. This is a way you can redefine your retirement if you like. If you'd like the show notes on this, there's a lot of detail on this. You can go to 4day entrepreneur. Com or you can go to 4day tools. Com and get the tool and type in your numbers and redefine your retirement plan of what you'd like to do. Then finally, if you want to create your overall game plan to start creating a four day work week, whether you're an employee, an entrepreneur, small business owner, go to 4day gameplan. Com and I'll give you the training videos and the tools and templates for free to help you create your plan. My goal is to help over 4 million people create and maintain a four day work week lifestyle.

Looking to help as many people as I can. If you have questions on this, let me know. As always, I look forward to helping you make more money in less time doing what you do best. It took me 22 years to figure this out for myself and implement it. It doesn't need to take you that long. Thanks for listening.