Good insight. Can you elaborate on why you think it's unlikely that the economy will still be around when you're 55? Also by economy to you mean the world economy, the U.S. economy, or the economy of some other specific country or region?
I suspect this gives me two more posts for the rational financial planning sequence:
I was being tongue-in-cheek, gesturing towards the basic transhumanist stance that everything will be different. What I mean is that any investments I make today are tied to many implicit assumptions about the world's trajectory over the coming years, and that I don't expect these assumptions to hold true over that time frame, especially considering the accelerating change I've observed in my lifetime so far.
None of this actually stops me from investing a reasonable amount in boring investments like index funds because I simply don't have that much stuff I want to spend money on.
I know I said I'd be gone... but this was just a comment originally, and I noticed it may actually be relevant.
Elharo said in Munchkin Ideas:
I'm interested in the following:
Why should people invest in retirement? Or, instead, why should someone invest as much as most do in retirement.
Few facts that make it a boggling question for me:
You are 10% to 20% likely to die before you enjoy even your first retirement year.
People adjust much more to harsh economical conditions than they believe they would. They remain happy, as many studies by Seligman and others show.
People who retire are only happier as retirees if they retired by choice (I lost the paper, sorry).
Most people here live in rich countries - darn, hate to be the exception! - , and their state would happily provide them with at least the maximal retirement plan legal in my country (aprox 2000 dollars/month). And surely would provide them with double the minimal (about 200/month) if they needed.
If you have descendants, they may support you in case you are still alive, and if you are not rich enough to keep a house, you have a good excuse to be in company of loved ones (you have nowhere else to go).
Last, but not least: That person is not even you that much anyway.
Given all that, I have no clue what the whole fuss about retirement plans, and being 60% of a rich old person with a crappy body is all about, specially if you are in the grave.
I mean, in the cryopreservation chamber, of course.
Edit: A related question not worth its own post, but maybe worth discussing, is Should inheritance "jump" a generation. Everyone inheriting from grandparents, instead of parents? Just the abstract ethical question. Regardless of implementation procedure.