When Is the Right Time to Retire?

Most people don't choose retirement; retirement chooses them.  

If one is still employed at 70, by all means continue -- especially if that is what your employer wants.  But if it is only what YOU want -- and everybody else wants you out because you're dragging everybody else down -- with maximum sick leave, sabbaticals, work that has to be done over, undermining everybody else's efforts, then one has no business being there -- and it is to the benefit of everyone for you to cease "doing your own thing," there, rather than at home, on your own time.  That goes for everybody.

But the key metric, is how healthy one is -- and whether that can best be achieved in continuing employment, and/or devoting that time to more healthful activities.  That doesn't mean retiring to sit on one's front porch all day chain smoking -- before one gets taken to the nursing home to spend all the money they've accumulated over a lifetime so that somebody else can feed, bathe, turn and wipe them.  That's not a good financial planning or lifetime strategy all the President's men are envisioning as the future of America -- where people just get worse, and never better.

So the key question is, "What makes your life immeasurably better?" -- and not simply will one have enough money to pay for the final year or two of life -- as a human vegetable?  That is a totally meaningless consideration that all the financial and health care "experts" have fixated on -- as though that was the "be all and end all" of our days on earth.

Life is immeasurably more than just about money -- and accumulating more of it, so they have the $250,000 a year to prolong their lives in a non-functional state.  That is not the inevitable condition of human beings, "compassionate" liberals have deemed that stage of life, should be for everyone.

The challenge of every time and place, has been preparing the way for a healthier generation to be -- and not just to prepare everyone to be the caregivers for everyone else -- at prohibitively and accelerating high cost.  That's not a viable and sustainable future.

So what is?  Obviously, it is to create one's greatest health and actualization not possible before in the history and experience of the world -- by being it, and not just the richest person in the nursing home.  That is the challenge of our time.

What About Dental Care?

Community colleges that train dental hygienists and assistants, will usually provide a thorough examination, complete X-rays, cleaning and periodontal treatment, and advice on self-care for a very low cost (under $100) -- which is most people's best bang for the buck. 

They will also tell you if further work needs to be done -- so that one obtains a "second opinion" first, rather than as a luxury most people (think) they cannot afford -- before having further extensive work done.  Cosmetic dentistry is like cosmetic surgery -- they will do as much of it as one can afford.  So one should have this grounding in what absolutely needs to be done -- as opposed to what could be done if cost were not an issue.

Many community clinics will do extractions only for free -- or at a very low cost.

But the key in dental as well as medical care, is (preventive ) self-care -- which makes the biggest difference, and failing to address this first first line of defense as primary care rather prohibitively costly professional care too late down the road, is the massive failure and disconnect of the present course of health care that no amount of money can ever solve. 

There's just not enough free money the government can create, to solve all the problems people can create fro themselves, when they think it is somebody else's primary job to take care of themselves -- which is the critical problem of aging in the poorest adapting populations.  They never learned to care for themselves well, first -- as their primary responsiblity, as nature intended.  That is the missing link in the "caring" equation.  That is the viable, sustainable, cost-effective future -- and NOT another massive government-funded DEBACLE -- promoted by the media.