Well, I guess it depends on what doing whatever you want looks like. The idea is like, I’m going to work hard, put my nose to the grindstone, save up all of this money so that I can just spend the last half, or almost half, of my life doing whatever I want. You know, there’s a retirement loophole many might see in Numbers 8, which specifies that the Levites were required to retire from regular service at the age of 50. But if we dig a little deeper, I think we’ll see that this directive was not about ending their work entirely but rather about transitioning their roles due to the physical demands of their duties. So, sorry to burst your bubble—I’m sure not your bubble. I’m sure you’re a really hard worker. But the Levites were responsible for heavy manual labor, such as carrying the tabernacle and its sacred elements, which required much physical strength. Think about the physical demands of sacrificing animals and doing those kinds of things. The Lord knows that our physical strength might diminish with age.
Another one of the Levitical tasks was the inspection of skin diseases. So, without a show of hands, here—and I’ll keep mine down—how many of the 40-plus audience are using cheaters or full prescriptions in glasses because we can’t even read the instructions on a can of biscuits anymore? That was me this weekend. I had to ask my daughter, “Read what this says. How many minutes am I supposed to put these in here?” So, you know, retirement at 50 allowed the older Levites to shift from more strenuous roles to roles that better suited their age and their experience, such as assisting and teaching their younger colleagues in less physically demanding duties. This change is more reflective of God’s care for His servants. He who made us knows our limitations. His intention for work was to provide purpose and fulfillment and, of course, some income or a way to provide for ourselves without overburdening us. Sadly, if we take early retirement, this often sidelines many people at a time in their lives when their gifts, resources, time, experience, networks, influence, and wisdom would be the most beneficial. So the idea was not to remove them from service entirely but to leverage their wisdom and experience, moving them to more of an advisory and supportive role. This verse just proves God’s goodness towards us and His knowledge of our nature. It’s really human nature. It’s our tendency to worship something. Call it prioritization if you want, but we will become slaves to something, and the only really good option for slavery is to become a slave to Christ. Amen.
So, Shanna, if we choose to pursue this goal of early retirement, what are some of the most important things we need to consider if this is part of our plan? Well, I was happy to see that only 13% of the population plans on retiring before 60 because, quite honestly, it’s not very realistic for most people, especially the kind of people who desire to stop working and just do whatever they want. They probably don’t have the resources or the discipline to put together a plan that would actually get them there. And the kind of people who could put together a plan and actually execute it would be someone in a position to be very valuable to the workforce, or even to the kingdom. If you do have the talent and the discipline to make this early retirement happen, and you set sail on life’s adventures at age 50 and spend all your time, money, and resources fulfilling your own desires, we have to ask ourselves: Is that really good stewardship? Is that good stewardship of the time, talent, and resources that God blessed you with? I personally don’t think that we have that much time left. Even if we do, we must consider what we want to be found doing when the Lord returns. Our late founder, D’Ancilio, used to say that when the Lord comes back, he wants to be found with a sword in his hand. And I would echo that, and I would even add to it a little bit. A sword, a plow, or having my hand extended to the sky in worship or to my fellow human being, whether that be a helping hand to those in need, holding the hands of those who are hurting, or extending my hands to my kids or grandkids to nurture them. So I think those are the things that we really should be focused on.
Let’s pick up a little bit. We were talking about maybe reasons you don’t want to get into that mindset, that fleshly mindset that says, I’m just going to work really, really hard for 30 years, from ages 20 to 50, and then do whatever I want for the rest of my life. And quite honestly, I can’t say that I didn’t think that way at one time, but God has brought me to a place where He’s led me to a place where I enjoy my work. I see my work as worship to the Lord, as serving the Lord, as getting to partner with the Lord in the work that He’s doing on this earth. And I don’t want to quit.
From a practical standpoint, if you do—maybe you know—I read that article you were referencing, about retiring early. I don’t recommend it to anybody, so we won’t even put the link out there. It’s written from a very worldly perspective. But let’s say that you do want to plan to have freedom at age 50, and maybe it’s freedom to serve the Lord. A 50-year-old male has a life expectancy of approximately 28 years, while a female of the same age has a life expectancy of almost 32 years. Let’s just call it 30. So what’s happened in the last 30 years? Well, the main thing that’s happened with money has been inflation. In the last 30 years, prices have doubled for those who were on a fixed income. This really hurts because 50 cents now buys the same amount of goods that a dollar did back then, and that’s with inflation over the last almost two decades hovering around 2%. If inflation averages 4% going forward, costs would double every 18 years, meaning that in 33 or so years, every dollar you have would now be worth only 25 cents. So a $50,000 lifestyle today, which is fairly modest and not very extravagant, will cost you $200,000 in about 30 years if inflation runs at 4%. That’s a big difference.
Now, my mind turns to investments. So, even at a risk-adjusted rate of return, like let’s say you had a 60% equity portfolio and 40% fixed income because you need to minimize those risks, it could realistically give you an average of a 7.5% return. With 4% inflation, more than half of your return is going to be eaten up by inflation. That’s the importance of equity investing. But just to get there, let’s say, if you are 20 today and you want to retire at age 50, you would need to have between $4 and $6 million invested to support just a $50,000 lifestyle in today’s dollars. What that translates to is, if you can average 8% over the next 30 years, you would have to invest $35,000 a year. And what are the odds that a 20-year-old is going to be able to invest $35,000 a year?
Yeah, that’s really good, Shanna. I appreciate that a lot. We’ve kind of touched on some of the dangers of retiring early, but even a little bit more so, Shanna. Not only from a financial perspective but also from a spiritual perspective, what are some things that young folks like me—who’ve got our eyes bigger than our stomachs and think, “Oh man, I can retire at 50 or 45,”—need to consider, realizing there are dangers we didn’t think about? What are some things we need to think about?
Yeah, I mean, there’s not only the danger of retiring early, but the number one thing would be that idle time is the devil’s playground. You have to be wary of what would come along with that. But just the possibilities of it—I think it’s great. Even if you want to relisten to this, or if you’re in your older, wiser years and you know some young people who might have this goal, maybe you want to share this with them and walk through the exercise. Look at the realities of where we are today and what it takes to actually do that. I don’t think it would necessarily discourage someone from thinking that they want to try it. It might actually motivate them more to start saving at a younger age, but it might also give them a different perspective on work. We’re not guaranteed tomorrow, so what good would it be if we just spent all of our time working and never really pondering and considering what the Lord has us here to really do?
Good stuff, Shanna. Then the final question here is, say we retired a couple of years earlier than normal. If we’re trying to follow the FISM strategy, would we want to consider that when picking an age model? How would we factor that kind of variable into the equation?
Yeah, so our age models right now operate on the assumption that you’re going to retire at age 65. It adjusts risk down for older ages and up for younger ages. If your retirement age is under 65 or over 65, then you just need to adjust your age model accordingly.
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Is Early Retirement a Goal Worth Pursuing?