Redefining Retirement – Looking Down The Rabbit Hole

We know that there is going to be a huge drawdown of pensions, retirement benefits, 401Ks and IRAs over the next eight years. Will the stock market hold up? That is a good question. Predictably, the stock market will go into a downturn for many years. This will start to require some response from Wall Street if they want to manage it.

This would dictate that new financial instruments will have to be created in order to support and leverage such a turn down. The turndown will start to put the pressure on the financial brokerage community to bring forth some measure of financial security. When the “Baby Boomers” start to wake up to the fact that there retirement is being redefined by government, it will send some people running and screaming bloody murder.

Action on the social security system must be taken over the next few years. Ignoring this problem or neglecting the on coming drawdown, would be disastrous. Will the government raise the age of retirement? I believe so as they will have no other options that will work to delay the draw down of retirement funds. It isn’t just the government; Wall Street is going to have to take action as well. Banks are going to go crazy as the income flow from savings accounts will also start to diminish.

Aside, from all of this what about the little guy? Retirement is not going to be that much of an option, with certain exceptions, a large percentage of the retiring community is going to come up real short. Inflation won’t stop, prices will continue to rise, and housing markets will be flat. This period over the next eights years are going to be crucial. Government spending will have to be curtailed much more than any other period. There best investment is in new technologies and emerging markets involving new energy resources such as hybrid cars, alternative fuels, solar energy for homes and businesses.

There is no escape clause here; even the business community will be forced to make adequate changes to there own operations. These commutes to and from work is one place that they can start projects. Most administrative workers have computers at home and are connected to the net. The structure of having middle management sitting in supervision within a department will have to go network. It will eventually be the case where the worker is at home communicating to the main branch or hub for the company that they work for or with.

There is ample opportunity to start making these changes now. Any forward looking business will also see the merits of this type of structure. Of course this brings about other factors to consider, such as Workers’ Compensation Insurance. Look at a large company such as Walt Disney; since they wouldn’t have that many people in those cubicles, they could easily trim down the amount of buildings they need to occupy.

This would also encourage employees to work with that company longer, since they will still receive their benefits and pay, and save the commute. This inadvertently, saves energy for the commuter and the company. Let us not forget what has been on the table all year long, that is, the green house gases, which will also improve by just having people work out of their apartments or homes. I don’t know about you but at age 70 I don’t believe I would want to go through all the traffic and bottlenecks to get to work. There could be arrangements made whereby the worker comes in once or twice a week for meetings or for filing important papers. Companies right now can easily set up secured intranet accounts or VPNs.

Training and Education is very important especially if one is going to phase over to this type of plan. Running software, being security conscious, and backing up what one is processing are going to be key skills to have when employing such as strategy. This will eventually save most companies millions of dollars and they will be able to pay out “retirement” bound workers a bit more to stay on. Maybe one argument is that people would abuse that freedom and not show up to work. If that is the case as Donald Trump says “Your Fired!”

This is a paradigm shift. In order to keep up with all of the demands for energy savings, funding through taxation, avoidance of having too much of the aging population ending up on the streets, action must be taken. We can not continue the same old routines. There is absolutely no reason to avoid any of these issues. Preparation is more than half the battle, implementing solutions now is the answer.

Redefining retirement is simply changing the terrain. One has to adapt to the environment. Receiving a check that won’t even pay your mortgage or rent is leaving one with no choice but to continue to work. There is no fault finding here, we can not blame anyone for anything when it comes to our own financial problems.

Those who want to actually retire are going to have a few options but not many. In most cases, the home based business, will start to see many “Baby Boomers” entering these emerging markets. They will have most of the computer skills necessary or will have to do some training but not much, at least in a technical sense.

As I said before no one escapes this. The auto industry will be forced to spearhead the energy markets if they want to save themselves from bankruptcy. As Americans we need to lead the way, other countries are going to be really hurting, so it is going to be up to us to get this right. We have to set the example. Maybe it hurts to think about our future, maybe I am being a little too passionate about it. The trends don’t lie. We know what is coming so let us get prepared to take the appropriate action. My thought is do it now.