Is Early Retirement Selfish? Unpatriotic?
A while back, I saw an article that labelled early retirement as "selfish and unpatriotic." I didn't pass it along at the time, as I felt that people shouldn't be made to feel guilty about checking out of the workforce and living the traditional retirement. I want the Platinum Years Network to be about helping people pursue their passions, and ultimately that is a much better motivator than guilt. But this article keeps popping up here and there, and often generates some pretty passionate responses, and tonight I came across another such article, so I thought I would open it up for discussion. The first and older article is called, " Early retirement is an act of selfishness ," by Andrew Yarrow, vice president and director of the Washington, D.C., office of Public Agenda, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization. Yarrow urges the nation's 78 million baby boomers to forgo traditional or early retirement and work for a few more years, for their own s...