Money Minded Families

1Background: A Little Bit of “Retirement” History

Developing a healthy relationship with money and finances is a lifelong journey. That journey starts at young toddler age, extends throughout your entire life, and has ramifications at each step, all the way to the handling and distribution of your estate after you are deceased. Yet in this country we are generally fixated on one and only one step or destination, rather than on the journey. That destination is what we have labeled retirement. In this book, my goal is to give you and your family tools to manage your finances and goals throughout the journey, with the understanding that our children are being raised in a very different time, one in which “retirement” must be redefined or simply dismissed as the “goal.” I thought it prudent to provide a quick history of how retirement came to be and how it must change for future generations.

In the late 1800s, when the concept of retirement as a government policy was adopted first in Germany under Otto Von Bismarck, “retirement” at that time had a very different meaning. Bismarck introduced the idea of retirement as a modern government pension, a financial benefit for workers once they reached the age of 70 and most could no longer perform physical work. Before this concept, if you lived, you worked; there was no stopping or retiring from one's job. Otto wasn't motivated by compassion for the plight of the working class, but rather wanted to preempt a growing socialist movement ...