Mentat Financial Planning

You see it on commercials. You hear it from the credit union. Your parents remind you about it and offer their two cents.

I’m talking about saving for your retirement of course. This is RRSP season and we should all be thinking about our futures. You may only be 25 years old but you have to get started now. Put away a little bit every month. Every penny counts. Don’t expect the government to be there for you.

What’s your dream (or better, what dream have you bought)? Is it sitting on a beach sipping margaritas at 55? Maybe you want a cottage on the Canadian shield with bottles of California wine? It can all be yours, you’re told, if you just start now.

I’d like to offer some retirement advice of my own because I’m always thinking about the future (and a lot of people are starting to hate me for it). Call it Mentat Financial Planning (I’m still waiting on the trademark).

1) Do you really think there’ll be a retirement?

Planning for a sunny future seems pretty unrealistic if you are paying attention to what’s going on in the world. Peak oil, mass extinctions, rampant cancer rates and most importantly climate change mean that in 40 years or so, when you’re due for that golden handshake, the world will be a lot different.

If you’re lucky enough to make it to 60 you’re likely to be toiling in some field growing food or chopping firewood (hopefully all the trees haven’t been felled by then). This will be in line with how all the other animals and a shrinking number of humans live on this world—‘til the bitter end.

2) Where is your money going?

Even if you can (like most people and politicians) ignore climate change and all the other human-caused crises that circle the earth like buzzards, you can’t ignore that your retirement savings (and mine, we’re all in this together) are hastening the downfall of the planet.

When we invest, we have no idea what activities our funds are supporting or what products are created. You might be supporting genetically modified foods, or nuclear power, or the military-industrial complex. You might not agree with these things so why oppose them by writing letters and marching when your capital is doing quite the opposite?

Even with ethical investment, you still prop up a system that exists to grow endlessly on a finite planet. This kind of thinking is madness and follows the logic of a cancer cell.

3) Why wait until you’re 65?

What kind of madness has gripped Canadians that we think we have to suffer now in our youth to profit later when we are racked with arthritis and suffer from high blood pressure (likely caused by our suffering in the first place)?

We can choose to live now. Just because the world tells you how to behave, doesn’t mean you have to listen. I’d much rather have adventures and freedom now than pretend I’ll enjoy traveling around with a diaper or a dialysis machine when I’m an old man (again if I last that long).

4) Cycles of Social Assistance

Even if the world doesn’t somehow collapse and all the mountains of evidence are wrong, I believe that life follows cyclical paths. We are currently living in a time of increasing income disparity between the rich and the poor. This is indisputable. This has happened before and will happen again (sadly). Most of us are barely getting by while others are just breaking in to that new ivory backscratcher.

Ultimately ordinary people are going to demand a stop to this selfish behaviour and their piece of the pie. This will mean the return of the welfare state with respect for the elderly, the poor and the disadvantaged. So by the time we get close to retirement age, the cycle will be complete and we’ll have a comfortable retirement all laid out for us.

I must stress that I have almost no faith in this final bit of advice from Mentat Financial Planning.

I’m sure dear reader, that at this point you’d like to remind me that we have to work to get food, shelter and all those shiny goods from China that make life worth living. You’d probably also want to say that if you want to raise a family you need a lot of money. I beg to differ; if you want only the basics then you’re set. Quell your desires and you can live quite frugally (a brilliant word by the way) and happily.

So what are you doing friend? Live now!