The Retirement Bubble

Hanukkah is recently over and Christmas is soon to be over. This is the season when many of us stop and take a moment to be thankful. Those of us involved in planning our futures have many things to be thankful for too. Here are a few that come to my mind.

Internet – Where would we be without it? Well, we would not be here! And we would not have access to masses of information that can help us plan. When I was young, the encyclopedia was the closest thing I had to an Internet and, as you know, it was a very pale shadow of the Net to come. That was followed by the Whole Earth Catalog in 1968 and for several years afterwards, a fabulous volume filled with so much interesting information on services, products and much more that most of had never heard of before. Steve Jobs of Apple called it the conceptual forerunner of the Internet. It was fascinating and great fun, but yet another pale shadow of the Net that would arrive a little later and put it out of business. The desire for a comprehensive collection of knowledge had been around for centuries, but it was the Internet that really gave the concept life. I think the Internet and its popular applications (email, for example) deserve our thanks, very much so.

Books and articles – These have been around for a very long time and they still serve very useful functions. I love the Net, but I also love to sit down and read a book or an interesting article on paper. The Net still is not as easy to work with as a book for some purposes. That will surely change as the Kindles of the world, a step in that direction, develop into something far more advanced, but that is yet to come. In the meantime, I am thankful for paper and the words printed on it!

Transportation – With few exceptions, we can pretty much go anywhere we want to in the world, faster and at less cost, than ever before in history. The Net, books, and articles can help us dream about other lives in other places, but there is nothing better than being able to visit for ourselves to see the reality behind the dreams and, if we like what we experience in real time, move to take advantage of new opportunities. As an American living in Panama, that certainly is something I am thankful for!

Education – I am not talking about traditional schools. I am talking about all of the above, as well as thousands of courses we can take in nearly every imaginable field, many of them free or at very low cost, that can be found in our own communities or on the Internet.

Time – We live longer than ever before and there are all sorts of services, appliances and so forth that free us from boring, but necessary, tasks. Sure, we can fill that “extra time” up quickly enough, but we fill it with what we choose to do, not just what we have to do.

Niches – Throughout history, there have been scattered individuals who practiced unusual careers or followed unusual pastimes. They rarely met and if they did, at an annual convention perhaps, there was little time to share with others with the same interest. Now they can find each other far more quickly and easily. They can meet and share regularly, whenever they want to, and they can collaborate as never before.

Websites and blogs – The Internet again! But with a twist. Sometimes, we forget that the Internet is a two-way street. You can take what you have learned and experienced, go to a website like WordPress or Blogger and set up your own space on the Internet for free. This blog, for example, is a WordPress blog. Today, people can share so much with you, but you can also share with them. No doubt about it, the Internet can be “interactive” as you want it to be.

Of course, there is the one fundamental principle on which all of economics is based – there is no such thing as a free lunch. Much of that which future planners have to be thankful for is free. Much is very cheap. The rest may be more expensive, but cheaper than ever before. But they all demand a price and that price can be summed up in one word – effort. You can get so much out of each of these, if you are willing to pay the price. But at least they are there, waiting for you to pay that price whenever you choose to.

Planning for an unpredictable future is not easy and it is not simple. We all know that. But we have so much to be thankful for as future planners, the least we can do is take a moment to stop, consider them, and express those thanks.

Above all, I have you to be thankful for, so let me sincerely thank each of you right now.

Friday is Christmas and I may choose to blog or I may not, I will not decide until Friday. If not, though, it will happen on the weekend. In any case, I hope this is a wonderful season, however you celebrate it, for you, your family, your friends, and all of us!
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