Join me for a 2-hour poolside chat about retirement.
Folks, it’s probably better to just watch my videos on retirement. However, I recognize that some folks prefer to read articles on the subject. I wrote down a bunch of notes before I made this particular video and realized I might as well clean up the text and generate a post.
Planning Retirement? Only ONE Number Truly Matters…
75 (Seventy-Five)
Seventy-five is the only number that matters to most males in the United States. That’s your life expectancy give or take a few years because it depends on whose charts you look at. I’ll use 75 because it’s a nice round number for one reason.
The other reason is that after 75, your health ain’t headed for the better. Around age 75, the Grim Reaper starts seeing your name on his hit list. At the least, your mobility is probably going downhill around that age. You’ll begin to do a lot more rocking in the rocking chair and less dancing once you hit 75. Things on your body are going to start falling out and falling apart.
Many people by age 75 are in a nursing home shitting themselves or they’re already homesteading the fucking graveyard. So, I’ll stick to the number 75 because in my opinion that’s a fair number to quote.
Now, many of my viewers out there are in their 70’s and in GREAT shape. But, folks who live in Southeast Asia or they’re married to a chick 30 years younger than them, they / we are not the typical American male. Our lifestyle, activity level, sex life, and thought process is totally different than the guy sitting on the front porch with a 70 year old American wife. A 75 year old living in Southeast Asia has a young mindset. He’s at happy hour on Walking Street drinking beer with his buddies looking at titties. The typical 75 year old who has never left the States is more focused on going to church and bingo.
However, you’re not guaranteed one more day on this earth. You could die today. You could die tomorrow. That’s what all the retirement gurus don’t talk about. That’s what the U.S. government and SSA doesn’t want you to think about. They need your ass to keep working as long as you can to keep the social security pyramid scheme going. They need you to draw as little money for as few years as possible and hurry up and die.
I’ve talked about these metrics before but let me tell you about my inner circle of friends. I’ve never had many close friends in my life, and now my posse is down to just a few road dogs. It seems as if it’s not good luck to be a close friend of mine…
My buddy Dave died at 37 years old. How much money did he get to enjoy from a pension or social security? ZERO. It doesn’t matter what his retirement plan was. He’s dead. End of mission.
My buddy Tim died at 55 years old. How much money did he enjoy of his social security? ZERO. It doesn’t matter what his retirement plan was. He’s dead. End of mission.
My buddy Pablo died at 49 years old. How much money did he enjoy of his social security, pension, Thrift Savings, etc.? ZERO. He’s dead. End of mission. Pablo kept saying he just wanted to quit his job and move to his small pig farm in the Philippines. We kept telling him, which at the time we though was sound advice, to stick it out a few more years where he could get a check every month. He died 12 days after the last time I saw him. He got to spend zero days drinking beer and doing nothing on his little pig farm. He didn’t get to live his dream even one day. I feel guilty about giving him that “responsible” advice. We should have told him to roll out, Dogg. The worst that can happen is you go broke and have to get on a plane back to the U.S. and find a job.
My buddy Dennis died almost one year ago at the age of 59. He did get to enjoy a few years of some social security money due to him being disabled. But, he only got back a fraction of what he paid into the system. You think he planned on dying at 59? You think that was part of his retirement plan? It doesn’t matter because he’s dead. End of mission.
It’s down to me, the Jay Dogg, and Doc Wayne. I just made it to 50. I’ve already lived longer than Dave and Pablo. Tim and Dennis went down in their 50’s. Who’s next out of the three of us still standing?
Want to Know How to Retire Early? Drop the Word Retirement from Your Vocabulary.
What you’re really looking for is a lifestyle change. You’re either unhappy with your job, don’t like where you live, or you’re divorced, alone, and with no hope of finding a girlfriend in the U.S. You should have searched “How to Change My Lifestyle” and the title of this video should be the same.
Outside Western countries, many people don’t even know what the word retirement means. They don’t have social security to look forward to, a pension, or any type of investments. They work every day until they die. The good thing is, they’re not conditioned to be slaves to the words retirement, pension, social security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.
If you’re from the States, you’re conditioned from birth to worry about these issues. Therefore, you’re a slave to the machine as we say. You spend hours upon hours of pouring over what your entitlements are going to be. Is it better to start drawing money at 62 or wait? What allotments should I set up? How can I defer taxes until…
Yada yada yada yada www dot bullshit dot com.
You’re wasting valuable time in your life that you cannot recover.
I propose that instead of focusing on “retirement” and how to live on $967 USD per month in the Philippines when you turn 65, focus on how to change your lifestyle NOW, to something you’re happy with.
Change your mindset that you’re going to make money somehow, every day, until you die or physically can’t work.
That doesn’t sound like my idea of retirement, you say? Let me tell you something, your idea of retirement is not how it ends up being.
“A man with no purpose is a dead man.”
You like to go fishing? Take a leave of absence from work and go fishing every damn day for a month. You’ll get tired of going fishing every day. Now what you going to do? Apply that to golf, going to the beach, etc.
Go sit in a GoGo Bar every night. That may take a little bit longer to get bored of, but trust me, even looking at titties every night gets old. It took about 3 years of hanging out in GoGo’s for me to get bored of that scene. Now, I only go when friends or acquaintances come to town and offer to buy the beer.
Having some type of job is healthy. Generating some type of income is healthy. It will keep you from rotting away on a bar stool drinking cheap beer in the Philippines.
I’ll talk about some ways to make money in just a few minutes but let me cover the retirement Gurus.
Retirement “Gurus” are ALL Full of Shit.
Kids in their 20’s making retirement videos? What the hell do they know about retirement? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. They know how to make a YouTube video. That’s their scope of expertise. People are so ignorant (lack of awareness) that they will watch these videos and listen to kids wearing skinny jeans and living in their parent’s basement.
How to make a million dollars and retire early? All these gurus are full of shit, too. Many of them are just pure fakes.
“Ain’t nothing real on the Internet, homie.”
Quote I read on Twitter years ago from a young black gentleman in the U.S. It basically sums up most of the Internet in one sentence.
Most of these folks on YouTube are broadcasting horseshit information that probably ain’t gonna help you. Even the 0.01% of these gurus who actually are millionaires aren’t giving you usable advice. Most of you aren’t going to take action based on what they tell you or you don’t have the money to implement their advice. Therefore, you’re wasting your time watching these types of videos.
It’s called analysis paralysis.
It’s like someone who says they’re going to start a YouTube channel as soon as they decide on which camera to buy. They end up watching camera reviews for 3 years and take zero action. The person who took a camera (any camera) and started making camera-review videos is the one making money!
If you’re watching this video, you’re probably too damn old to implement a 25-year investment plan. You didn’t land on my doorstep by searching how to spend my million dollars. So again, you’re wasting valuable time by listening to kids in their 20’s on YouTube.
How to Make Money and Travel the World
Sometimes I feel like I’m doing the same video over and over again but people keep asking the same questions. I understand the need for updated information and as time passes, my opinions and advice do evolve. But for a minute, let me talk about how you can make money to either survive until your pension or social security kicks in. Or, how to make a few extra bones to support your girl at the GoGo bar.
Let me back up for a bit and talk about the easiest way people have made money outside the West in the past…
You go teach English for $1,000 USD per month in places like Thailand. You can still do this in many countries around the globe. You ain’t going to get rich, but you’ll definitely change your lifestyle and get out of the West. Benefits of this lifestyle is that the school usually helps with your visa. Downside is that if you quit the job your visa gets cancelled. Teaching English is one of the traditional go-to jobs that Westerners can do.
Twenty years ago and before, if you wanted to travel the world, you dreamed about being a travel writer. Then, travel blogs came around. Thousands of people thought they could start a travel blog and make enough money to roam around the world. In reality, only a handful of people made ANY money from a fucking travel blog. 99.99 percent of everyone else didn’t make a dime and quit.
Then, YouTube came along. Now, everyone thinks they’re going to start a YouTube channel and make millions overnight. That’s what the gurus say and people believe them. That’s not reality for most folks.
Why do I talk about this? Well, because historically you had two career paths of being a world traveler. Go teach English or do something entrepreneurial online like affiliate marketing or drop shipping. That left us old guys out in the cold because we didn’t understand the technology and still don’t.
These days you don’t have to do something entrepreneurial in order to travel the globe or go live with your fiancé’ in Guatemala. These days you just have to get a damn job where you can work remote. The whole damn world was working from home during this Covid debacle so now it’s become the norm for many positions. You just need to find yourself a job in your home country that allows you to work from a laptop and Internet connection.
So this is what I tell people now:
If you want to make a lifestyle change and travel or go be with your fiancé’ in her village, start at your current job. Go sit down with your boss and explain that your dream is to live in Guatemala with your lady friend. You need a job within the company where you can work 8 hours a day from your laptop and a phone line. You’ll do customer service, take orders, write memos, scrutinize spreadsheets, etc. Whatever your boss needs you to do, as long as you can do it from your laptop and a phone line.
Tell your boss you’ll work for a reduced salary. Why? Because If you’re making $24K USD living in Guatemala, you’re living a better lifestyle than if you are making $100K in the U.S. Tell your boss you will even do it on a contract basis so they don’t have to pay you benefits. I’d almost guarantee that if your company has more than 100 employees, you can cut a deal with them and secure a remote position. It’s a win-win for you and a win-win for them.
You don’t have to be tech savvy to send a damn email or answer the telephone and talk to customers.
If your boss doesn’t have anything for you, get on a job search site and look for remote jobs. Some insurance company, somewhere, needs someone to answer the phone and deal with new customers. Some warehouse, somewhere, needs someone to process paperwork and deal with customers on returns.
Especially after the year 2020, if you tell me you can’t find a job that allows you to work remote, you’re full of shit.
Look, it may be boring work answering customer service questions for 8 hours a day. Who cares. After those 8 hours, you can sit on the beach with your Guatemalan girlfriend enjoying the sun set. That’s much better than freezing your ass off in Buffalo petting your Labrador and talking to your girl on a video chat.
Should You Retire?
Here’s my updated advice on when you should retire. It has evolved through the years but I think this is the best course of action for most.
If you’re happy with your job and don’t hate going to work, I’d keep getting a paycheck for as long as I could. I would take lavish vacations as frequently as I could. Change your mindset to being retired on duty. Stop worrying about the job as a career and merely look at it as a paycheck. Burn every vacation hour you got as soon as you get them. Use every hour of sick time you have in order to go fishing. Don’t worry about missing out on anything at work. Turn your focus to you but keep getting a paycheck and maintain your health coverage and benefits.
Now, this may not be the best course of action if your fiancé is down in Guatemala.
I’ve heard from so many of you who have fallen in love with girls outside your home country and you tell me about your 8 year plan. You’ve got to work 8 more years and then you’ll move down to Guatemala and live happily ever after with your lady. That’s too long, my friends.
There’s no guarantee you’ll live another 8 years. You could end up like Pablo and never make it to the pig farm. All those grand plans you’re making, the house your building, all the money your sending down to Guatemala will show you no return on your investment. When you die, your girlfriend will find a local dude who will enjoy your house and barbecue grill I’m sure.
If you absolutely hate your job, despise going to work or even getting out of bed in the morning, it’s time to make a change now. Why would you spend 8 more years of your life in misery just so you can get $1,200 USD per month for a few years? It makes no sense to me. I’d rather make a change now, to where I’m happy now, working and doing something to generate that $1,200 at some type of job in which I don’t hate.
Listen, we have to plan for tomorrow. That’s obvious. We all have to eat. But, if you drag that plan out too long, you could end up dying before it ever gets implemented.
Would I rather have $1,000 USD per month starting at age 62, or would I choose $2,000 USD per month starting at age 65?
Give me the $1,000 USD per month at 62.
There’s no guarantee I’ll make it to 65. There’s no guarantee that free check will still be around by the time I turn 65. Give me the fucking money now and let me enjoy life. It doesn’t matter how much money you got coming to you if you’re dead! It doesn’t matter how much money you’ve got if you can’t get out of the fucking rocking chair. The clock is ticking. Time is like a freight train coming straight at you and you’re tied to the railroad tracks. Ain’t nobody gonna stop that train, my friends. It’s coming.
My dad always says:
Don’t worry about dying. Death gonna take care of itself. Always has and always will. Just worry about living.
Lifestyle Change May Be The Better Option For You
You see these photos on all the retirement videos? There’s a beach, palm trees, and beautiful clear-blue water in the background in most of them. Is that what you’re dreaming about?
I lived in South Florida and I went to the damn beach every day after work. I had two folding lounge chairs and a cooler that stayed in the back of my truck. I didn’t need to retire or wait until I was 65 years old to go to the beach every day. I just changed jobs and moved to Florida. Simple.
Dream about drinking Margaritas on the beach? I always had a bucket of frozen Margaritas in the freezer. Just grab it and go. Back then it cost about 10 bucks to have frozen Margaritas on hand 24/7. I didn’t need to retire and move down to Mexico.
How much does it cost to go to the beach in Florida? Parking was sometimes free.
There’s no need to retire if you’re merely dreaming about hanging out on the beach every day. Move to Florida and get a job.