Retirement Security Is Also About the People You Have In Your Life

Pop quiz: What would it take for you to have true retirement security?

Odds are you just thought of a number — $500,000, maybe, or $1 million, or $5 million.

But Charles Eisenstein, author of “Sacred Economics,” has a message for you: Whatever number you came up with, you got the answer dead wrong.

That’s because real retirement security isn’t about a number, as he discusses in his book. It’s actually about the relationships in your life — the friends and family and communities you can truly rely on. After all, when the money runs out — as it will for many of us — those relationships are all you have left.

Obviously we should all try to prepare our nest eggs for the kinds of lives we want to be living in the future, but I thought this interview by Chris Taylor in Reuters was interesting. The idea is that strong, secure relationships are just as important as socking money away because if, for whatever reason, your finances are wiped out, you’ll have people who care about you who can help you turn things around. I don’t always agree with Suze Orman, but I’ve always agreed with her mantra of “people first, then money, then things.”

Photo: Keoni Cabral

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