New Year's Resolution time is coming up, resolve a way to REALLY plan for your retirement.
Here's some very hard truth. This is the important thing missing from 99% of the discussion and advice you read about finance: long-term inflation, even if it stays "low" at 3%, it will eat your future retirement and the future of the next generation. The more you keep in USD and assets that are denominated in or whose primary value comes from USD, the harder you will be hit. $1,000,000 in 60 years will be worth approximately what $160k today is. Run your own numbers with this inflation calculator:
Inflation Calculator (2026): Calculate U.S. Inflation by Year
SmartAsset's inflation calculator can help you determine how inflation affects the value of your current assets over time and into the future.
Social security likely won't be around when my peers come of age, and if it is, it will be paltry. Social security relies on a growing population, we don't have that and likely wont anytime soon. If you're a woman, you potentially have an exit package in the form of a man providing for you financially in exchange for being in a relationship you don't want to actually be in. And you will be competing for that man potentially in a rough economy with very few men who have enough money to support the existence of two people, most men are already can't do that. Men have no such exit package, so they especially need to prepare for long-term inflation. Either way, prepare now or face the consequences as you age.
To hedge against inflation, many people invest in gold. The problem with gold is that it doesn't have a limited supply. Not only are massive unknown gold deposits found every couple years, not only is the vast majority of gold concentrated into the hands of the few, but demand drives up supply. This means gold's value has an actual cap on it. If gold's "value" doubled overnight, you'd have people running to the dentist to get their crowns removed. Deposits that were previously financially unviable become mineable again. Plus, there's gold in space. We can also make gold in labs, it's just not profitable to do so yet. More gold supply would be brought online to match that demand, bringing prices down. Let's also not forget executive order 6102 where the US govt went around seizing everybody's gold when times got tough. Not to mention, most people don't own "physical" gold, they own "paper" gold.
Bitcoin is the only asset with a truly limited supply: 21 million coins. There is no more Bitcoin anywhere, even in space. Bitcoin's supply is limited by math. Owning real gold means securing it physically with things like safes. Owning real Bitcoin means remembering twelve simple words (your seed phrase). Bitcoin cannot be seized and you can bring it through borders effortlessly. The total number of Bitcoin that will ever be mined is 21 million, most of which have already been mined. There are 60 million millionaires in the world, that's not counting billionaires, the wealth of nations, or the wealth of corporations. That's the math you need to be doing, not trying to figure out how to squeeze a reasonable lifestyle out of a paltry 3% return on your index funds.
