Never Retire - Removing The Stigma From Never Retiring

If you retire early, people marvel at your accomplishment.

If you’re part of the FIRE (financial independence, retire early) movement, you’ve really done something. You managed to save a vast majority of your earnings early in life to facilitate a super early retirement. Like in your 30s or 40s.

If you traditionally retire with ample cash to live off of, you’ve neatly bookended the American dream. Presumably, you have a nice house, two cars in the driveway, and a handful of grandkids to show for it.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with any of these scenarios.

However, if you don’t go one of those routes, there’s often a stigma associated with your situation.

If you’ll Never Retire, you must have done something wrong financially along the way. You’re destined to a meager existence, relying on Social Security and a part-time gig as a Walmart greeter.

That’s at least how it feels from the perspective of a person who reads and writes articles about retirement (and general personal finance) for a living and knows he’ll Never Retire.

There’s no shame in Never Retiring, even if you did do something wrong along the way.

The key is how you react to your reality.

Not how you respond to everybody else’s reaction.

Here’s some of my story, as a case in point—