Editor’s note: This article was first published in August 2013. It describes Irving Kahn as Wall Street’s oldest investor at 108, as of 2013; he died in 2015.
Probably one of people’s most contradictory dreams is the one some books drill into us with the message “Retire young and rich”. It’s contradictory for the simple reason that the very thing that will make you rich is exactly what will stop you from retiring.
Most millionaires have no plans to retire, according to a recent survey by Spectrem Group, a wealth research firm. A small minority would only consider retiring once past the age of 70, and although many of them could have retired at 40, as some books suggest, it never even crossed their minds at the time. Why?
There are many reasons why the rich don’t think about retiring. The first is that they don’t need to, because for them what they do isn’t exactly work: they do what they like and are passionate about. They tend to be very involved in their businesses, so it’s normal for an 80-year-old business owner to still be making active decisions at his company, attending board meetings and dealing with the truly important problems.
They are people of action, and being people of action is what made them who they are. That’s why nobody can picture Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett watching TV in his living room or playing pétanque in a park.
Others consider their company their greatest creation and wouldn’t for a moment think of stepping back from running it personally. Some of them say they’re retired because they now work only 5 days a week instead of 7.
So what kind of person wants to get rich and retire young?
Obviously we’re talking about the kind of person who’s looking for a quick windfall in business, the kind of windfall that, with that mindset, rarely comes. Succeeding in business takes a lot of hard work and persistence, so a person who has achieved their dream rarely abandons it to retire. The millionaire is a nonconformist by nature, and so will always want to grow and earn more. Complacency is the opposite of wealth, and therefore incompatible with it.
If you try to achieve success in business through something you don’t enjoy, you considerably reduce your chances of succeeding, and if you achieve success in business doing something you enjoy, why would you want to stop?
The desire to retire young and rich grows as our satisfaction with life in general, and with work in particular, shrinks. So it isn’t a question of retiring in order to be happier and have a fuller life, but of enjoying what we do.
It’s true that the secret of success is often sold as creating passive income that will make us money for life without any involvement on our part. But passive income as such doesn’t exist, and in the worst case it can also fail. That’s why I always try to replace the term passive income with yielding income (ingresos redituables), and this kind of income still needs a plan B. What’s more, for me, building passive income isn’t a synonym for wealth but a support for building wealth, as one of the ways we have of increasing our income to build up serious capital.
I’ll finish by saying that Irving Kahn, Wall Street’s oldest investor at 108, took part in this survey and says he has no plans to retire for now. In fact, he’ll die pressing the key to buy or sell shares.
Further reading
- How do you know what to do with your life? Which job or business is right for you?
- The secret of millionaires, told by millionaires
Featured image: Robert Schediwy, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
