Never Retire: How to Make a Living Doing What You Love
Today, we kick off building your Never Retire strategy, starting with the key to doing work you love for a living
Today, I start to look at how I view and structure work to highlight the original inspiration behind the Never Retire newsletter and help you develop a viable work element of a larger Never Retire strategy. Beginning today, we’ll pull it all together into something you can use throughout March and beyond.
But first—
Thanks to everyone who has subscribed—for free—to my forthcoming Substack, Friki de Bici.
Double thanks to those of you who have been so kind and generous to throw some venture capital my way. Call it a Series A funding round!
A Never Retire newsletter subscription—you can upgrade here—or a separate show of support will not only help me launch Friki de Bici later this year, but ensure it remains free and reaches its full potential.
Please use this link to support at an amount you choose. I appreciate it.
For additional details on all of the above and some other fun stuff, read these now or after you read today’s Never Retire newsletter story, which digs into what to do about the death of the American dream with the beginnings of a viable work response.
That’s really the premise on which the Never Retire newsletter was born.
The idea that the American dream is dying and—really—might not have been worth the effort in the first place. So, how do you respond as someone who doesn’t want to work 40-plus hours a week in pursuit of the double whammy of the American dream meets traditional retirement? Trying to service a 30-year mortgage and save so that—when you’re around 60 or so—you can quit work altogether. Trying to do two impossible—and unnecessary—things simultaneously.
It almost sounds crazy to tell a person in their twenties in America today that—before they do anything else—they’re going to need a minimum of $2,000 a month for housing and a minimum of $500 a month in savings if they want to live alone (or, in some cases even, with a roommate) in a medium-to-large city and have enough cash to retire at some point between 55 and 65. Especially after they have seen so many who have come before them “fail” or burn out while trying to hit the material milestones of the runaway American dream.
Fail is the wrong word. Because when massive numbers of individuals, acting independent one of another, combine to create the retirement crisis as we know it, it becomes clear that there’s a problem with the prevailing system and its expectations. Not the people simply doing their best to survive and hopefully thrive within what has now officially—if it wasn’t already—proven to be a broken system.
An unmitigated disaster.
The American dream is dead. And—really—the current administration isn't to blame. It was never a good idea. These cretins are merely pouring salt in the wound and stomping on its grave without concern or consideration of a way out for millions of people in search of viable alternatives.
If you think they care about the prices of eggs, let alone housing, I have a bridge named Brooklyn to sell you.
And this is because America’s culture of individualism doesn’t call for collective solutions to make people’s lives easier. Americans equate an easy life with laziness. It takes about 12 minutes on the ground in Spain—and, presumably, other parts of the world—to realize that this is a bull shit association.
Make no mistake. As things deteriorate further in the US, more people will realize this. It’s a process that has been in motion for a long time. Sort of like the pandemic sped up the process of making remote work the norm, the Trump administration will speed up the process of Americans waking up to realize that the American way of life is the antithesis of a good life.
As an antidote, Never Retire sounds great in principle. And it is. But you need a plan. A comprehensive plan that includes work. Because you need money.
I can only tell you how I view and structure my situation. I’m in a unique position. Hopefully, you can take my perspective and adapt it—concretely and psychologically—to your situation.