If you have Social Security, Medicare, a supplemental health plan, a full- or part-time income and a decent amount of reserves, you should be OK even without a pension or large retirement account. Living within your means is also the critical other half of retirement that rarely gets discussed. Most retirees that I’ve known over the years haven’t had fat pensions or retirement plans, but lived well because they learned how to live on the cheap. That’s a very real investment as well because it’s acquired by habit and that takes time to build, just like a retirement plan does.

You hit it pretty well there mentioning that it’s easier said than done. Investing, or in this case; developing multiple streams of income, this is the part that calls upon your financial intelligence. Your creative side. If you were to ask me what my streams are going to be, I’d respond with stocks, commodities, webpage ownership, and other forms of intellectual property.

@Kevin M

This is something that left me thinking quite a bit. I must say, you have left upon the blogosphere, a very rock solid point. Most of us do write about investing in ways that are tailored for youth. We’ve completely neglected the elder demographics who may be completely devoid of any assets at all (It’s been said that a huge chunk of baby boomers are entering retirement in debt. Mon dieu!) Their time is a lot more valuable than ours, given their lack of time that’s remaining!

And it’s tough. There’s little to long term like we could in investing… And it would call upon them a larger demand of financial intelligence. And in the case of the indebted retirees, we’re already ahead of them in that regard.

Shucks.. That’s a terrifying thought…
.-= Aury (Thunderdrake)´s last blog ..Hoarding Dragon Basics – Investing in Precious Metals =-.

If you have a $1 million saved by 65, what happens if there’s a run of double digit inflation?

I want to STOP working, not hear that I have to work till I’m so old and feeble that all I have left is sitting around waiting for various “health” “care” “providers” to do a total cashectomy on all I struggled to put together in my aging years. That’s not retirement, that’s serfdom.

Our society is simply refusing to deal with longevity in intelligent, compassionate ways. Elders should be encouraged not to work, but to be elders, and there should be a significant safety net for that.

Work means selling your time for cash, living or planning to live hand to mouth in a cash-based society which has monetarized everything from the water we drink to our very homes. All so that a small cadre of overseers can make a huge profit on us all.

This is an appalling outrage, and although I am in my 50s, with good savings, I consider telling people, “Well, you’ll just have to work till you’re 80! Get used to it!” the opposite of “out of a rut.” This is the same old feudal rut, imposed on longer lives, and leaving no hope of escape.

I don’t WANT work in my old age. I don’t WANT to be passionate. I want to be quiet, wise, and centered. Not scurrying around with the latest iCrap and a bunch of Boomer baloney that says You Are What You Earn, and that if your days consist of just being here now, you aren’t as valuable as those irritating types constantly running in the hamster wheel of consumption, image, and addiction to way too much excitement, energy, and activity.