![](https://iravs401k.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/5fd3b39b9cf1420018d2eda9-750x420.jpeg)
- I always thought retirement would be boring and not for me, so I passed on my first chance to open a retirement account.
- I only thought about retirement in terms of what I saw as a kid growing up with my grandmother, and knew I’d get bored quickly. I wanted to keep working for as long as possible instead.
- Then, I read “The Millionaire Next Door.” The book frames saving for retirement in a way that really isn’t about retirement in any conventional sense at all — it’s about building long-term wealth.
- Thanks to the book, I now see that saving for retirement doesn’t mean I can’t still keep working – my work might be all the better for it.
- Use Blooom to analyze your 401(k) today and see how you can grow your retirement savings »
I grew up living with my retired grandmother. Every day started the same way for her: with a cup of coffee and the morning paper. She’d do the crossword puzzles before cleaning the house, doing the laundry, and making dinner. She retired from her secretarial career a few years before I was even born, yet she never wavered in her daily round-the-house race. She seemed content.
But I knew from a young age that same lifestyle wouldn’t work for me.
I knew I wanted to write from when I was a kid, and even now I can’t imagine leaving it behind. I can’t imagine having a party in 2061 when I turn 65 and receiving congratulatory cards, eating cake with my coworkers, and never touching a keyboard again the way my grandma did.
The problem isn’t that it doesn’t sound nice — it certainly does. But giving up my writing career would mean I wouldn’t be able to fulfill some primal part of my brain that can’t rationalize the world without writing about it. Simply put, I’d be a mess without some sort of writing to do. And writing letters vertically and horizontally in black-and-white blocks on newsprint will never cut it for me.
That’s why, when I got my first full-time job, I didn’t open a 401(k). Why should I save for something that doesn’t even seem enjoyable? If I want to work forever, what’s the point?
It wasn’t until after reading “The Millionaire Next Door” and re-framing the way that I think about retirement that I changed my ways.
I didn’t realize that saving for retirement is a way to build wealth
When I first learned about retirement accounts, I thought they weren’t very applicable to me since I didn’t want to retire anyway. I discounted the whole thing — wrongly.
But after reading author Thomas J. Stanley’s book about how millionaires save and build wealth, I realized how much retirement savings contribute to the net worth of millionaires. Most of the people Stanley interviewed were just normal, dedicated people who saved and invested slowly and steadily for years.
So, a few weeks ago, at 24, it finally hit me that maybe I had it all wrong. I’d started putting a tiny amount into a 401(k) when I got hired at Business Inisder, but thanks to Stanley’s book, I ended up nearly doubling my 401(k) contribution.
Now, I think about saving for retirement as a way to fund my own career later on, not ‘retire’ in the conventional sense
The average age of the people Stanley interviewed for “The Millionaire Next Door” was 50-something. Many of them were still working — doing the things they loved, running businesses, or using their skills in other ways. I was surprised that the interviews in the book didn’t describe retirement in the way I used to think about it.
I intend to write and work for a long, long time. And saving for retirement doesn’t mean that I can’t do that. In fact, later on, it could help me do more of what I want, funding my own writing career without having to worry as much about making as much money.
I’ve stopped seeing my retirement account as a way to fund a life I don’t really want, and, instead, I’ve started seeing it as a way to fund the work I love. Since making that mental shift, I can not only justify, but actually enjoy, building up my 401(k) and seeing those contributions come out of my paychecks. Whenever I do touch my savings, I’ll know that whatever life I did save for, I’m going to be able to live it on my own terms.
Disclosure: This post is brought to you by the Personal Finance Insider team. We occasionally highlight financial products and services that can help you make smarter decisions with your money. We do not give investment advice or encourage you to adopt a certain investment strategy. What you decide to do with your money is up to you. If you take action based on one of our recommendations, we get a small share of the revenue from our commerce partners. This does not influence whether we feature a financial product or service. We operate independently from our advertising sales team.