Todd Polke argues the standard path—study, get a job, buy a house, work until retirement—leaves you with only $24,000 a year. He pushes back against this "financial slavery" and says you should design your own financial goals instead.
how do we actually design and then set goals, design the life of our dreams and actually go out and do it? We're not taught anything about it. What we're taught to do is, go study hard so you can get a safe, secure job. Then you buy a home with a fat mortgage on it, pay it off over 30-odd years, exchange time for money, put money away in a super thinking that's going to save you, listen to the system, listen to the government, listen to the tax offices, and then work for 50 years of your life and then hope you're going to rely on living the good life in the future. That rule of life sets you up for financial slavery and then a lifetime of poverty for when you're in retirement, because the pension system for a single person is only $24,000 a year now. And that's what it is. I can't live on 24 grand a year. And why the bloody hell would you want to live on 24 grand a year?
