Let’s imagine that we tell a three-year-old kid to retire from her playing at the park and sit idle. Our ears will be annoyed by heavy screaming and crying. Yesterday, my daughter was playing in the garden. She was playing see-saw and enjoying. Then I saw that she was sweating and she was almost tired. Then I had given her water and told her, “Aadhya, Let’s go home !”. She said, “No, I like it.” I am stunned because I am almost tired of watching her play. She does not want to retire from playing and give up. She is on her own. We often talk about retirement from our work, which creates enough mental disease and a restless mind.
Let’s understand an uncertainty called expense
The very uncertainty of not knowing our expenses makes our after-life retirement vulnerable. The living cost after retirement is sitting like an elephant in our minds. We even forget everything else when calculating our future expenses and coming up with zillions of excel sheet formulas and calculators. We calculate all our current costs and every small expense as part of our formula. We want these expenses to be removed from our minds, and it creates this deep insecurity about our future. Unfortunately, we miss the point that the our expenses are not accurate. It is an imaginary expense and you can start feel bad about this fictional expense
But how can we handle this imaginary expense with a deep insecurity
We are comfortable imagining the expenses. We feel that our expense calculator was our fortune teller and close friend. We think that we have all our costs calculated, including that foreign trip with a plan of drinking tequila shots and sleeping on beach couches.
We have missed the point, and there is a mother for our expense.
That mother is called Inflation. When you calculate your expense, you must have missed this mother and add Inflation as part of your expenses. Unfortunately, Inflation cannot be handled in the future, and it can be taken care of at present. Your future needs are different from your current needs. Also, there will be new demands and new needs to take care of your life, and your expense calculator will have missed all the future desires and wants. So it is very safe to say that your retirement savings may not be enough to take care of your future needs, so you need something else in place.
That something else is called your skill
You need a skill that allows you to earn money after your retirement, contribute to society and family, and your ability to create cash flow (I will explain this another time). Also, through skill, you will be able to handle Inflation by generating cash from your services. You become a veteran skill ninja in the marketplace, and your consistent learning will allow you to attain the skills. Also, the skill that you are learning may be a good pastime option after retirement. We are social animals that thrive and have happiness based on our contribution. So your skill is the way which will allow you to contribute and make you happy.
Let’s take an example
You take an expense, and you come up with a percentage of this expense. What is the one skill required to cover your a percentage of cost? The skill does not need to be complicated. Example, If you help someone write a speech for their retirement day and charge for it, and your market is ready to pay. You will have friends and customers asking you to write an article for their retirementday speech.And they are prepared to pay. Writing an article for a retirement speech is a skill, and also it will allow you to cover your expenses.
But what if you don’t want to attain skill and sit on the sofa.
You are an analytical mindset, and your mind is a great calculator that you know the exact amount to predict your retirement amount. But hey! Waiting for the moment of “Sitting on a sofa for doing nothing” seems to be a bad strategy. Also, there may be a feeling that you are not contributing enough to your society and family. We cannot control this feeling and handle it as well. It is nature’s way of keeping us alive and allowing us to feel that we are here for a great cause. Also we are emotional animals and not analytical.So, we can do what is balanced with the contribution feeling: learning something and using our time after retirement. If you are someone who is planning mini retirement then the skill will allow you to earn money, take your nine to five time off and allows you to enjoy your life now. Also it can give you an alternate career path.
Summary
This article covered an uncertainty called expenses, understanding its mother inflation, and using our skill to handle expenses and Inflation. The future is uncertain, and it is infinite. When we think about uncertainty, everything seems vague, and it is filled with desire and fear. But there is one thing that will remove the fear and allow you to attain your desire. Also it gives you the confidence to handle this uncertainty. By this time you know it and that is a skill. You can gain your favorite skill, become a master in it and enjoy your life with lots of playing like my three year old daughter.