Victory Lap

Once you achieve Financial Independence, you may choose to leave salaried employment but with decades of vibrant life ahead, it’s too soon to do nothing. The new stage of life between traditional employment and Full Retirement we call Victory Lap, or Victory Lap Retirement (also the title of a new book to be published in August 2016. You can pre-order now at VictoryLapRetirement.com). You may choose to start a business, go back to school or launch an Encore Act or Legacy Career. Perhaps you become a free agent, consultant, freelance writer or to change careers and re-enter the corporate world or government.

How executives can survive sudden job loss

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Amazon.com

By Bill Treasurer

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

The transition of a leader’s career from the top of the crest to the other side can actually be a beautiful thing. This is the time when your wisdom is ripest, when the bulk of your legacy has been established, and when your influence has left a tangible and positive mark.

At this stage of your leadership career, you are a leader in full. It’s worth noting that the leadership influence of many leaders became fully expressed late in life. Benjamin Franklin was 70 when he signed the Declaration of Independence (Samuel Whittemore was 81). Ronald Reagan was 69 when he became president, and 77 when he left office. Golda Meir became Prime Minister of Israel when she was 71. Dr. Ray Irani, the CEO of Occidental Petroleum, is currently 75 years old, making him the oldest Fortune 500 CEO.

While your leadership career may span many years, the current average retirement age in the United States is 62. Given that average life expectancies have been steadily growing, figuring out what to do with all that accumulated leadership wisdom and influence before you retire, will help soften whatever butt-kicks may come when the gates of your career close. (By butt-kicks, I mean embarrassing and humiliating moments in your leadership that serve as a starting point to discover your strengths and values, and become better).

Butt-kicking tips for senior leaders

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Retireby40’s take on Semi-retirement and Victory Lap Retirement

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Joe Udo of Retireby40.org

By Joe Udo, Retireby40.org

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

It might be surprising to new readers of Retire by 40 that I don’t believe in the traditional definition of retirement.

Yes, the site is titled Retire by 40, but I really meant Semi-Retire by 40. The idea is to leave the stressful corporate job life and continue to work part-time on something I enjoy. I don’t want to spend every day lounging by the pool or golfing at the country club. That sounds nice, but I’d be bored out of my mind in about three days! Full retirement can wait until I’m 70.

The problem is Semi-retire by 40 just doesn’t have the same impact as Retire by 40. There wasn’t a good word to describe what I was aiming for … until now. Mike Drak and Jonathan Chevreau’s new book Victory Lap Retirement describes exactly the lifestyle I wanted when I started blogging.

What is a Victory Lap?

The following paragraph from the book explains it perfectly: Continue Reading…

Never mind a few years more Longevity, what about Immortality?

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longforthisworldbookWe’ve reviewed several books about Longevity over the nearly two years the Hub has been running, the most recent one being Mark Venning’s review of The 100-Year Life. (See Superlongevity: The 100-Year Life in a Blue Zone).

I mentioned this book in my talk Thursday to T.E. Wealth, in the context of the prospect of an 80-year investment time horizon for Millennials. (Implication of that: 100% stocks!)

But until now, for obvious reasons, we have held off on the “farther out” topic of immortality.

Even so, there is a growing literature on the topic of what I might term “ultra-longevity.” One in this camp is Long for This World: The Strange Science of Immortality.

Published in 2010 by science writing teacher Jonathan Weiner, the book focuses on a real believer in the possibility of human immortality: one Aubrey David Nicholas Jasper de Grey, who he quotes thus: “When you start talking’ about five-hundred year humans, or one-thousan’-year humans, most members of the general public get a li’l bit nervous.”

Indeed, and Weiner himself seems skeptical, despite providing such a platform to Aubrey de Grey. As the back-cover blurb states, “Could we live forever? And if we could — would we want to?”

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The next Boomer wave: Semi-Retirement

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wave-1031216_640As I argue in my latest online column for MoneySense, published this morning, I believe that the next big wave to be surfed by the baby boom generation will NOT be retirement, but Semi-Retirement. Click on highlighted link to access: Why semi-retirement is the future.

See also my October 18th interview on this topic with CBC On the Money’s Peter Armstrong.

I’ve also argued that the boomers are largely going to be responsible for retiring the very word Retirement. This is of course the central theme of the book I co-authored with former corporate banker Mike Drak: Victory Lap Retirement, which MoneySense excerpted in its Summer retirement issue. See Why you wake up each day. (See also links to two recent reviews and a BNN clip listed at the end of yesterday’s blog: Millennials say Financial Independence defines Adulthood.)

Now a cynic might argue that in making the Victory Lap Argument, necessity is the mother of invention. A lot of us haven’t saved enough to retire in the style to which we’d like to be accustomed. Add to that the decline of corporate Defined Benefit pension plans and minuscule interest rates and there’s a lot to be said (at least financially speaking) for sticking at the old grind for five or ten extra years.

But those extra years don’t have to be spent as an employee in a corporate setting, complete with the challenges of coping with bosses, endless meetings, daily commutes and all the rest of it. There has to be a happy medium between corporate wave slavery and the traditional “full-stop” retirement that amounts to a permanent vacation. Some call this new stage between full-time careers and traditional retirement an encore career or a legacy career. We call it the Victory Lap.

The real wild card is extended Longevity

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Millennials say financial independence defines Adulthood

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When asked to define what constitutes adulthood, 40% of of millennials (aged 18 to 26) cited Financial independence, according to a Bank of America report issued on October 6. it was reported by Reuters under the headline “For millennials, adulthood now defined by financial freedom.”

As Bank of America executive Michele Barlow puts it, “It’s not so much that young adults are having trouble with adulting: they’ve simply redefined it.”

With so many millennials still living at home (often because they can’t afford to leave), it seems they view adulthood as being able to land a job and not depend on their parents for financial help. About 14% surveyed named moving out on their own as their top priority, while getting married, starting a family and getting an education were all cited by 7%.

This study is music to our ears here at the Financial Independence Hub. Of course, our definition of Financial Independence (or the contraction, “Findependence”) is a bit stricter than merely landing a job and no longer being financially dependent on parents. We tackled this early on: see the highlighted post, Merely leaving the nest does NOT constitute true Financial Independence.

Still, getting rid of debts, landing a job and no longer being dependent on the Bank of Mum and Dad is a huge step TOWARDS Financial Independence and ultimately what we used to call Retirement. While not quite synonymous with the outdated term Retirement, we view Findependence as having sufficient financial resources that you do not have to depend on employment income to make your daily and monthly expenses.

How do you know when you’re truly findependent? Continue Reading…