That’s not true at all
Many people know with certainty they can never retire ever
It’s an open question if they can get into heaven
this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2026
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
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- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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most people are just trying to pay off a house so they're kids don't have to start from nothing
They're --> their.
Even stronger faith I'd say, since billionaires aren't actively conspiring with politicians to keep you out of heaven.
I think they would certainly try if they could pay for the exclusivity.
Just got to bring back Tithes.
Tithing is still a thing, it just means giving money to the church, specifically 10% in some denominations. I think what you're referring to is "indulgences," the practice of paying the Catholic church for entrance into heaven.
I'm technically a millionaire, as many people who have worked a white collar job for 30+ years are. That's calculated by the value of all your assets, not cash on hand. So if you bought a home in Austin in 2001 for $200k, you're likely, technically, a millionaire in 2026.
In 2022 I got cancer (clean now) and I saw the medical bills. If I ever become ill for a prolonged period of time, my wife and I will be bankrupt well within two years. If the dollar collapses and takes our savings with it, we'll be bankrupt much, much sooner.
IMHO, unless you are a Billionaire or multi(50+) millionaire, I don't think a care free "retirement" is in the cards.
Don't you think this is rather optimistic?
I was being facetious. No one knows what the future holds. Enjoy today and don't panic.
I’m late 40’s right now, always assumed social security was a pipe dream so I’ve diligently put away money in 401ks and IRA’s. I no longer believe they will be worth anywhere much longer.
Was a nice country, for a little while, at least that’s what my parent's generation tells me, I’ve never been here for it.
My boomer mom did that and lost everything in 2008 when she was laid off and then had to live off of her savings and try to save her house after her 401 k crashed and her house went upside down. She was fell into a depression and developed early onset Alzheimer’s but didn’t have insurance it’s was brutal the rest of the story is even worse. The criminals running this country don’t give a fuck about you and will get everything one way or another
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I know I will retire between 62 and 64, and I'll be ready for it.
Don't live too long or get sick though, you'll run out of money
That's not how sound retirement planning works.
Yeah, what I'm saying is that you can't really plan for retirement considering you could burn thru millions in medical care during the Medicaid gap., and medical care prices keep increasing
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That's why whenever some d****** Boomer asked me what my retirement plans are I just looked them in the eye and say homicide or suicide
When I was in my early 20's I gave up on the idea of retirement. I was watching the environment being ruined and realized my retirement was going to be awful and stressful. I decided then to live for the moment so I could be happy.
I travelled many countries, live abroad for a number of years, met many different people, tried many different things, learned many things, slowed down to enjoy the little things and even got an HR manager fired to top off my list of personal accomplishments.
I don't want to grow old and lately I've seen how awful it is to slowly die in a body you are losing control over. Too many times.
I've already made peace with my own death whenever it comes. My retirement plan now is extreme sports. If I'm going out, I'm doing it living in the moment.
From my perspective, it's strange to see so many people fight to live long, to live forever or to create a legacy that persists beyond their death. Eveyone dies and everything will be forgotten. That should be something beautiful but instead it fills people with fear.
got an HR manager fired
Please share, so we can live vicariously through you.
The short story is that I lost my mind with how I was being treated and how things were being run. I brought up my issues at a Monthly meeting.
Then I brought up even more issues with the fairness committee member which included racism, sexism, ageism, abusive managers, unfair treatment of contractors (I was a full time employee), work culture and a few other things.
That lead to a 3.5 hour meeting with the HR manager and the fairness committee member where I was basically blamed for all the company's lack effort to do anything.
Enter more mental breakdown.
Eventually we had an employee survey where I emailed the corporate HR manager about my company's horrible management. Made friends and gained the trust of corporate HR by proving I was able to work with corporate to change the work culture instead of seeking retribution.
My company HR terminated me. I emailed corporate HR, then got a lawyer. Nearly a year later I filed for wrongful termination (my lawyer caught covid and was delayed). One month after filing for wrongful termination, my old HR manager was forced into early retirement and she was back in her home country of Barbados before I had my meeting with the Labour Board and my old company.
Because I made friends with corporate HR, I brought a lot of attention to my old company after my termination. That place was forced to make very expensive changes and upgrades, there was a huge crackdown on safety which caused even more costs, HR became such a useless mess because the replacement HR manager inherited an absolute shit show, and management began to crumble without the old HR manager who used to hold all the corruption in place.
The cost of all the changes, upgrades, safety, external lawyers (they needed better lawyers than they had in house) and my severance came directly out of the pocket of the General Manager who was top position at that company. This place had over 300 employees and 300+ contractors over Canada, America and Mexico at the time.
That HR manager was so fucking petty. I'm not a petty person but my sister taught me everything I needed to know about pettiness. When people play petty games everyone loses. The petty person is naturally a loser and the person on the receiving end loses because they are forced to deal with the petty game bullshit. If I was going going to be petty, I had to lose before I even started.
It took me 10 months to get terminated. Early on I decided I wasn't goint to quit silently. They were going to have to pay to get rid of me. Even if we both lost our jobs, I still feel like a winner.
Dude we have shockingly similar overarching stories but my HR manager firing was for costing the company I work for 10s of thousands of dollars for not having the right visa to work in china and getting stuck in south korea for weeks due to the easter holiday making it so they forgot where they left me until I got ahold of someone again.
My retirement plan is skydiving.
Sounds like a partially stressful vacation in South Korea. Did you get in trouble for not having the correct visa? Or was that HR's fault?
My retirement plan is go gliding in a wing suit. I want to experience gliding like the birds do.
HR was supposed to provide the Visa as I was going for a ship transfer and the political rallies and the north korea missile definitely didnt help but I did get to see fireworks on a beach after a night of crepe cakes and BBQ.
I actually was the reason the company implemented a system where a person was hired to check all visas manually from then on.
The main trouble was the HR Manager tried to dock my pay for the cost of hotels and flights and tried to get me fired for saying no and I threatened to sue. Had to meet with the captain who thought the whole story was very funny including me staying at his standard hotel room at a very nice hotel in the bahamas.
I just want to know what its like to go terminal velocity and see if my luck is bad enough that I miss the ground. But knife and skydiving is my plan for how.
I mean you could drop all your ethics and become a corrupt politician, get the congressional pension, then have someone ghostwrite your memoir and enjoy the royalties.
Set yourself up in a semi dangerous field with a pension and retire at 55.
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My retirement plan is to die in the resource wars.
My retirement plan is to die in a fracking accident.
Retirement was never a thing before the 50s or so. That's why even at the time they had set it to roughly the average total lifespan. It was supposed to be a coinflip to begin with. And honestly one of the shared facets of societies where people routinely live to 100 is actually the lack of a concept of retirement. And part of that is that work isn't something you either toil at physically for extended periods or being trapped behind a desk. It's physical but not to excess and they have regular breaks at least weekly and plenty of holidays. You're not supposed to grind grind grind for years then just stop. You're supposed to have work that's accessible and fulfilling that you can maybe slow down a little on with age but not just cut off at some point.
they're called blue zones
- Okinawa, Japan
- Sardinia (especially Nuoro), Italy
- Ikaria, Greece
- Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica
- Loma Linda, California (Seventh-day Adventists)
Other shared traits include:
- Mostly plant-based diets, low in processed food
- Regular, low-intensity physical activity built into daily life (walking, gardening, manual work)
- Strong social ties and multigenerational living
- Clear sense of purpose (“ikigai,” “plan de vida”)
- Low chronic stress, with built-in rest or ritualized downtime
- Moderate caloric intake (e.g., Okinawan “eat until 80% full”)
- Little smoking; modest alcohol use (often wine, socially)
I think it actually demands more faith. There's no proof heaven doesn't exist. But there is loads of evidence you will not be able to retire.
Same faith required as to whether the sun will come up tomorrow or not. You can't depend on anything. You need a busload of faith to get by. RIP Lou Reed.
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Death IS the new retirement.
Or at least, it should be, given how much I'm looking forward to it.
This totally true sentiment Reminds me of Boxer from Animal Farm. Doesn’t have to be this way though we could take over the farm
Jobs with pensions still exist. There are also many countries with free healthcare, so that doesn't need to be factored in as well.
I'll make it. I won't be well off, but I'll make it.
My kids probably won't unless something changes soon. That fucks with my head a lot. How did we fuck this up so bad?
If you budget and save up money you go to heaven? Huh
Store those sins away for a rainy day.
Talked to my wife a few days ago about this and made her sad with it but she could understand why i feel this way, i said i don't want to live a long life, 50 is enough (about to be 38 btw) and if i manage to live to be 60 i'm going for assisted suicide, like why the fuck would i want to live long enough just to become someone's burden and there's really no point in "looking forward to retirement" because a) i'll be too old to enjoy anything, if i am properly mobile by that point considering my job does involve heavy lifting and b) while i am earning "decent" money for the fact that my education has no relation to my current job, this money does absolutely fuck all for retirement and will get me about 1000-1500€ per month and that's if the threshold doesn't go any higher, investments are mainly risks that mostly don't pan out and the time when there were investment opportunities i didn't have money to do anything, so i'm just choosing death.
The thing is, there's no clear cutoff when you are so old that you become a burden.
If you are unlucky, you might hit that at age 50. If you are lucky you might make it to 90 while being fully self-sufficient.
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