Retirement is the last time in the mind of most youth today. Why think about retirement when you still have 30 plus years to work? My advice would be to start planning your exit even before you begin any job.
If your plan is to retire at age 60 or working for 30 years before retiring, I think your plan is already late. I have seen too many retirees whose monthly pensions could barely take care of their needs. It still shocks me to know that millions and millions of hardworking people are betting all their financial future and security on the government or pension managers to handle it.
We in this age needs to be more financially responsible for our financial future rather than depending solely on a company or government to take care of us when our working days are over.
If I may ask, what retirement plan is Aliko Dangote in? Do you think he will be in one of those retirement plan package? The answer is No! The reason why he will not use any of those retirement plans is that he is using different forms of leverage to plan for his financial future.
Our school system trains people to be employees rather than to be business owners/entrepreneurs and that is why most of us are not prepared to manage our retirement, we prefer it to be handled by the government or their company.
I believe we need to be better educated and prepare to handle our retirement early. In order for you to retire young, you need to know how to use different forms of leverage; leverages are activities/things that help you work less and less while you earn more and more.
We will be discussing some of the leverages below.
The leverage of words/mind:
One of the major leverage in retiring young is the leverage of the mind, it has the power to make you rich or make you poor. Words are leverage; words are powerful tools for the brain. Words can be used to make you rich or poor. You need to learn the power of words and how rich people use rich words and poor people use poor words. Getting rich and retiring young begins with your words and words are free.
You can’t retire young if you keep using some certain words; words like “I can’t afford it†“I can’t do it†“we don’t have much money,†“how can I retire young when I don’t have any money.â€
Poor people use poor words and poor words create poor people. What you say becomes your reality. We should stop saying I can’t afford it even though we don’t have the money at that time instead we should spend time planning how we can afford it or ask or learn from people that has what we want.
Every time you say, “I can’t afford it†or “I can’t do that†or “investment is risky†or “I will never be rich,†you are using the most powerful form of leverage you have, and you are using it against yourself.
You will need to use your brain in your favour, not against you. You can change your financial future by changing the words you use and the way you think. If you can change your words and thought to those of the rich, retiring young will become easy.
The leverage of your plan:
In order for you to retire young, you had to have a plan. The plan must have an end and a time limit. I would advise a time limit of five to ten years if you are working in a very good company and a year if you are working in a place where you are underpaid, not appreciated or not fulfilled.
One advantage of retiring young is that you will have free time to get rich. The problem with having a job is that it gets in the way of getting rich and retiring young.
Most people plan to be poor. That is why so many people say, “When I retire, my income will go down.†In other words, they are saying, “I plan on working hard all my life and then I will become poorer after I retire.â€
Most of us when we want to build our house we will first get the blueprint of the house before starting, why when it comes to our financial future we don’t have any plan for it?
Start your future today by creating a plan or build a bridge to your dream. Your plans may include the following; study more, read more books, listen to more tapes, attend more seminars, start a business, get mentors and so on.
Getting rich and retiring young begins with the right mindset, the right words, and the right plan. After that, you can carry out the action steps with easy.
The leverage of your action:
The reason why some many people do not retire young or even enjoy their retirement is because they don’t take any action to achieve that. In the world today only 5 percent is rich and retire young because the 95 percent did not take any action that the 5 percent took.
The three main assets that make people rich and allow them to retire young are: Real estate, paper assets and businesses; note that paid employment was not included.
Spend time acquiring assets, investing and building businesses rather than working for money. If you want to retire young you must need to work less and earn more. In order to do that, you must use some form of leverage. Some of the leverages that you must use are:
• Other people money
• Other people time
• Other people ideas
If you are working hard physically and not getting ahead financially, then you are probably someone else’s leverage.
Financial education will help you retire young and also keep your wealth for generation. This is why I write and conduct financial education seminars; any organization that is interested in helping their staffs plan for their retirement can contact us through our details below.
Olodu keonyedi – is a trained engineer and by passion and personal development a public/motivational speaker, a business coach and human capacity developer, he has a B.Eng degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Nigeria Nsukka, he is a member of Nigeria Society of Engineer and a COREN registered Engineer.
Email: olodukeonyedi@gmail.com Tel: 08037489704, www.instagram.com/sir_keon. www.facebook.com/olodu keonyedi_mentorship.
