Retirement
Tom Shrader critiques the traditional American approach to retirement—working until you can live for yourself—by examining the rich fool in Luke 12 and Moses' 120-year life divided into three 40-year seasons. He argues that retirement should be a transition from one form of service to another, not an end to meaningful work. Drawing from Moses' example of his greatest impact coming after age 80, Shrader encourages listeners to think beyond financial planning to legacy planning, asking what they will do that lasts beyond their lifetime.
“My name is I'm not, I'm not running anything, I'm not the head of anything, I'm not in charge of anything, I'm not the maker, I'm not the savior, I'm not holding all things together, I'm not all knowing, I'm not God.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Financial Foundations
Recorded: March 16, 2006
Duration: 39 min
Themes: retirement, service, legacy, stewardship, purpose, aging, work, calling, approaching retirement, older adult, planning future, seeking purpose, empty nester, career transition, financial planning, legacy building
Scripture: Luke 12:16-21, Deuteronomy 34, Isaiah 6, Philippians 3
Theological Themes: biblical stewardship, christian vocation, discipleship, spiritual maturity, kingdom work, eternal perspective, faithful service, sanctification
Full Transcript
We are picking up in week seven of an eight-week series. You have an outline in front of you with five points on it. We are going to cover none of them. I figure there's probably something good in there, so why don't you take it home and find it.
Ironically, coming back from the surgery stuff, the topic today is retirement and it's in the context of our financial foundation series. So we've talked about ownership, security, savings, borrowing, lending, investing, giving, paying taxes. I really, we developed this series I think in 1986. None of that has changed. I kind of think the retirement deal has.
I cringe thinking of me teaching about retirement 30 years ago as compared to now. My bar is kind of at the point where what my goal is for you just to think about this topic. I think you naturally think about the future, and my Yale's in second grade. He's a unique kid. I wish I had his mindset, but he came home—he's in fourth grade math—and he came over last night and said, "I got the only A plus in fourth grade math and I'm in second grade." I said, "Well that's good." He said, "Here's my question. Do you think I should send that to Stanford now so they can get that on file?" I said, "Buddy, you'll be at St. Ambrose with me. You got my genes. This can't last long on this thing."
A First Encounter with Retirement Thinking
Here's my first brush with this. My senior year of high school, I'm working—it's Christmas time in a little town. We were talking about it, you know, a little town, 100,000, still is 100,000. There were like prominent positions, like the banker in town at Davenport Bank and Trust Company. They were the players in town. Mr. Figge owned the company basically, and the people that worked there, they were the players. There was generally a law firm, sometimes a politician, but a lot of times a guy behind the politician. There were just certain things.
So my dad worked at the bank and he did a lot of business stuff, and it was Christmas time, so he called the guy at Sears and said, "You must need some Christmas help. My son needs a lot of help. Can you get him a job?" So they hired me. Most of you don't know me well enough to know this, but they hired me to work in automotives.
Now, I have a toolbox and in the toolbox is a Rolodex of every number I'll ever need to fix anything. I can't start a car. If that key, I'm jiggling, I got no. But anyway, they said, "No, you can do it." So I play a lot of mind games, so I would try to take my day and shorten it by working long, taking lunch late, breaks late.
So I'm taking a late break, I'm in the break room and I'm dressed, I presume, in probably some slacks and a white shirt and a little "I'm Tom, can I help you?" And there's an old guy in there. Now, old is relative—he would be like the age I am now, in a suit and tie. I can't let it go and I love to talk to people. So I go over and I said, "Do you mind if I sit with you?" And he said, "No, no, no, sit down." He said, "Who are you?" And I said, "I'm Tom Schrader." He said, "Oh, I know your dad. So you're working for us?" I said, "Yes." I said, "Who are you?" He said, "I'm the manager of the entire store." Okay, so in my mind, this is Mr. Sears.
I can talk to old people, especially. So I asked him—we're all done—he said, "I'd like to give you a piece of advice. Never forget." I said, "Okay." He said, "You should get out, go to college, get out of college, and go to work for Sears." I said, "Really? Why?" He said, "They have a great retirement package."
Now, I'm kind of glad I'm not in that retirement Sears system right now. But that fits what I've called here, kind of the American way.
The Traditional American Retirement Model
I think—cut me slack now, because I think this has morphed—I think if you go to my dad's generation, it was make some money, quit working for a living, spend your time in leisure, and ideally do it sooner rather than later. Now, I'm not sure that's all those guys. But that was kind of the deal. I'm going to work at something I may not like that much, in order to get to the point to be able to spend the rest of my life to do what I want to do. And so when we talk about retire, we talk about reaching a day when we start to do what you like to do most.
Growing up—and I don't know, I've unpacked this, I've had a lot of time to think about myself. I've been a lot of self analysis going on. And I've concluded I'm a little nutty. But I've been obsessed with the end of my life being okay. You know, I didn't want to go through all my life, spend all my money, have a great time, and now I'm 65 and I got to split a Dunkin' Donut with four people because I don't have any cash.
So I found there were two in my group, there were two approaches to retirement. I had a buddy, and I mean, you'd say to him, "How you doing?" He'd say, "Great." I'd say, "What's the number?" And he would say, "31 years, seven months, six days, four hours." I mean, he knew it. He hated what he was doing. He couldn't wait to get there.
My dad was on the other end of that. He loved the bank. Loved it. It was the iconic business. He loved it so much that when it was time for him to retire, he went a couple extra years. I'd love to have him here today to talk to him to find out if it was because he loved work or he realized, "I'm going to have to talk to your mother," which wouldn't have happened either. But I mean, so there were kind of those balances in this.
Setting Up Our Discussion
So I put together three case studies. And we're just going to make a bunch of points. I had a bunch of people yesterday, maybe being nice, and that was helpful to think through. So I think that kind of traditional thought process is warped a little bit. But if you sat down with a guy doing some financial planning or you're in planning, or now you have a life coach, you'd say when do you want to quit, how much money do you need, and then what are you willing to do to get there?
And so there was a book—I was at Barnes and Noble one day, and there were
The Traditional Retirement Mindset
I came across a book that really caught my attention. There were three stacks of this book, and I thought they must think this is going to sell. The name of the book was "The Number." I don't know if any of you read that book, but it was written by an East Coast guy who got together with his friends and did a lot of study. He concluded the number they needed to retire was between 15 and 17 million dollars.
I thought, I've got to do that too, but I don't think that's necessarily my number. What he said is, "I realize that's unrealistic," but he discovered that as people begin to think about the number, it generally doubles when they get to retirement. So if you say you can retire on a million dollars, when you get there, you need two million. The other thing he revealed in his study is 20% of people say the only way they can fund their retirement is to win the lottery.
You've got a lot of complicated issues and a lot of subplots. Well, if you have Bibles, open them to Luke chapter 12. Your Bible is almost going to fall there because we've been in this study many times before.
A Biblical Warning About Retirement Planning
It's about a guy who's paid his dues and done really well. He was in real estate, made a bunch of money, and got on the front end of this dot-com thing. Now he's at the end, and it says that the ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. He said, "Here's what I'll do: I'll tear down my barns and build bigger ones. There I'll store my grain, and I'll say to myself, 'You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy, eat, drink, be merry.'" But God said, "You fool! This very night your life will be demanded of you. Then who will get what you've prepared for yourself?" This is how it is with anyone who stores up things for himself but isn't rich toward God.
There is, I would say—and it sounds harsh, but that's kind of the traditional approach: I'm going to work really hard, I'm going to save that money, I'm going to put that away, I'm going to have a nest egg, I'm going to put a cushion around the nest egg, and I'm going to do what I want to do. I'm going to get old, and I'm going to live for me.
A Lesson from the Senior Class
This would have been 1986. I was at Grace Community Church, and there was a class there that was for old people. They didn't say, "If you're old, go here." You just walked in, and they held up a mirror, and if you fogged it, you qualified to be part of the class. It was filled with people like that. That sounds harsh, and I don't mean it that way—I'm that way now.
The guy called me and said, "Listen, you're younger and cockier probably, and filled with yourself, but I think you'd be good coming in to speak to us." I don't know about that, and he said, "Here's what I'd like you to do. I'd like you in two weeks to come in and speak to our class, and I want your wife to speak as well." This would be Susan, and I said, "Well, that's not her deal. She's never spoken in public before." So I went home, and he said he had asked her, and I said, "Hey, here's the deal," and she said, "Sure, I'll do that."
The next Sunday, we went in to walk through the class and get the feel for the class, have a cupcake, and do whatever they do. Now it's two or three days before our teaching time, so I said to her, "Here's the plan. They're going to introduce me, I'm going to set this up, I'm going to tee this baby up, and then you get up and do whatever you're comfortable with—30 seconds, 5 minutes, whatever—and then I'll come back and I'll fix it."
Susan's Powerful Challenge
You've got to know her, and she said, "All right, slick, that's a plan." So I got up and did my thing, and I said, "You know, I've asked Susan to speak, and Susan doesn't speak in public. This will be her very first time, so there's my wife, Susan." Susan got up, and she's like Haley. I saw Haley do a crisis pregnancy center talk that was absolutely incredible, and Susan is just—she could communicate. She knew points and how to do it.
So she got up and said, "You know, guys, I really want to speak to everybody, but ladies, more to you. When I was in here last week, Tom and I worked our way around the room, and here's what I heard over and over again. I heard, 'We're going to take a mobile home trip for a year, we're going to hike Europe, we're going to buy a place somewhere. We've done our thing, we've raised our kids, we're going to live for ourselves.'"
Then she picked up her Bible and said, "You're godly ladies. Can you find me—not a book, not a chapter, not a passage—a verse that says it's time to live for yourself?" And then she sat down. Well, I was right about the cleanup part. So I said, "This is why we don't let her speak in public—I'd have no job left."
The Struggle of Aging and Selfishness
But there is that reality, and now that I'm there, I want to be sympathetic to that. Now that I'm older and it's hard to get started, I don't want to get up at 5 o'clock every Tuesday morning and meet with a group of guys. I don't want to go out at night. We went out for dinner last night and met some people at 6:30. I'm in bed by 8, and I said, "6:30, Sandy? I'm going to drink all this iced tea—this is going to be..." She said, "Well, it's just what worked for them," and I said, "Well, what works for us?" So you know what I'm saying?
So I get that selfishness that's not just driven by being self-absorbed, but I think what happens is you make a shift. Alan and Betty Page—many of you know Alan and Betty—they were in this class for years. I did Al's funeral about a month ago.
A Model Couple's Approach
We had a premarital class with all this premarital counseling, and the guys that do it are great. The guys that have been doing it for years change lives. But one of the segments was they had Alan and Betty come in. They first invited him, and they said no.
We don't want you to do it. And they said, "Just come in." Well, we don't know, we don't have a talk. "You don't have to have a talk, just do a Q&A." They'd been married 63 years. They got married, they never had a date. He saw her at church, and then he went off to World War II, and started writing her letters and said, "I think we should get married." And when you debrief that class, you would hear over and over again, "The highlight of the class was Alan and Betty."
Now, I don't know how to do it, and I'm watching churches struggle with it. I have some influence at Redemption. I mention it. It doesn't get traction, so I let it go. But somehow, the generations can so learn from one another. Those of you that are older, and that really is—I mean, not trying to be funny—that's many, most, almost all in this room. You have so much to offer to a group of people who really want it.
There is that time to plan, there is that time to prepare. But the greatest generation is not done.
Case Study: Moses and the Three Stages of Life
Here's the second case study. And I'll give you a little heads up, because you're going to go to the table of contents—Deuteronomy 34. It's a guy, and you've had him. You've had him in your athletic programs. You've had him in your business. You've had her in your office. This is the guy, gal, person, who comes out of the blocks, blows out, and then decides to risk it all. And his name is Moses.
Moses had a life that was interesting in many ways, but really significant in that his life was—he lived 120 years, fell into three segments. This young stud, "I can do it." He was bred to run Egypt. He was convinced that he was God's guy to rescue the nation of Israel. He decided to do it his way. He ends up killing a guy. All of that falls apart.
So he ends up exiled for 40 years to desolate land. It's that time of year, we're starting to think about Coronado now. So it's that time of year, think of getting to Coronado and getting to—there's a—this is my joke—there's a hotel in Gila Bend called the El Coronado. We're missing the D. There's a big difference between the El Coronado and the Del Coronado. So I'm often saying to Sandy, "Let's go spend a week at the El." And she said, "No, the Del." Go to the El, make a left, you're in the middle of nowhere. That's where Moses was for 40 years.
God's Timing vs. Our Timing
And then God comes to him and says, "Alright, it's time to move these people." And Moses says—he's now 80—"I'm not that guy. I stutter, I'm flawed, my strategic thinking isn't what it used to be, not articulate, I'm lost, I'm confused." And God says, "No, you've always been my guy, your heart hasn't been right." See, sometimes in this thing, I get carried away and think it's about me and I have to have it, I have to have a strategic plan, and God's going, "I don't need, I'll get that."
The thing about Moses, he was always God's guy, but it wasn't always God's timing. There's a book—I checked yesterday, copyright 2005, what makes it an oldie—interestingly enough, Louie Giglio, and the title of the book is "I Am Not, But I Know I Am." So you kind of look and go, what happened? Well, do it backwards. The "I Am" is God, and when I know God, I know I am not.
This is really helpful, this is a great little book that you can still pick up on Amazon somewhere, probably bookstores. But in this, Giglio's talking about God speaking to Moses, and he writes this—God telling Moses, speaking about Himself: "I'm the center of everything, I'm running the show, I'm the same every day, forever, I'm the owner of everything, I'm the Lord, I'm the creator and sustainer of life, I'm the savior, I'm more than enough, I'm inexhaustible, I'm immeasurable, I'm God."
Understanding Our True Identity
Now Giglio observes, in a heartbeat, Moses knew God's name, something more. He finally knew—for if God's name is "I Am," Moses' name is "I Am Not." So now inject yourself into this story. This is you speaking: "I'm not the center of everything, I'm not in control, I'm not the solution, I'm not all powerful, I'm not calling the shots, I'm not the owner of everything, I'm not the Lord."
That's my name too, and yours—"I'm not." Try to say it under your breath. My name is "I'm not." I'm not running anything, I'm not the head of anything, I'm not in charge of anything, I'm not the maker, I'm not the savior, I'm not holding all things together, I'm not all knowing, I'm not God.
And that idea of—we're talking in the context of retirement, but of life—is just simply understanding who I am, and sometimes it takes God a while to get you there. Life has that way of preparing you.
It's Never Too Late
If you think of Douglas MacArthur, you most likely think of World War II and Korea, "Old soldiers never die, they just fade away." Virtually everything you know Douglas MacArthur for, he did after age 65. If I remember—I could be wrong here—I know his father was a Civil War general, which is an interesting connection. I think he was head of either the 1932 or 1936 U.S. Olympic Committee.
Winston Churchill, and all the things you know about Churchill, he did after age 65. There's not this rush here. It's not that it's already passed you by. It's not that it's too late. There's a tendency to say, "I'm going to get serious about my faith, I'm going to do something." Well, you might not be ready.
The Isaiah 6 Pattern
It's Isaiah 6. Isaiah sees God. When he sees God, he sees who he is. When he understands who he is, he says, "Alright, I need repentance and forgiveness." He gets it, and then God says, "I got a bunch of stuff to do, who should I send?" And Isaiah says, "Here I am, send me."
This sounds condemning. It's working in my head. I haven't thought it through. But in a lot of churches or organizations, we get a lot of people who want to do something, but aren't really ready to do something because God hasn't done anything to them yet. It's not about me.
I have these bromides that I use that make so much sense to me, but frustrate those around me. The younger guys, I say this all the time, Tyler gets it, but I don't think he can articulate it. Most of
The stuff we do doesn't really matter much. I mean the stuff you're busting your pick on, they don't make any difference. I just finished a book by Michael Kingsley. Some of you might remember him in the old days—he went point to point with Robert Novak on Crossfire. Kingsley has Parkinson's disease, and he's writing about it. I'm a sucker for these books. He's got a line in it, and I'm going to get it pretty close. He said the problem with current affairs is they don't stay current very long.
The stuff that I'm so worked up about, I'm watching it now in the coaching. The Grays, our guys are having a really tough year. They're 1-9, they've lost their swagger. It sounds so stupid. I don't know how you take a 9-10 year old and re-energize that kid. How do you get that back? If it's football, and you know you're a 28-point underdog, and you're going into the big house, and there's the guy with the khaki slacks, and you're going to get killed, how do you play that game?
How do I get that in life? Well, I get it, and I was trying to say to one of the boys the other day, I don't care about baseball, but this tells me how you're going to handle everything else. I'm struggling, because it's not even a quitter, a pout, it's—I just can't really do it. It doesn't matter. It does not matter.
The Reality of What Actually Matters
I don't know how many Little League games I played—15 times 4 roughly, so what is that? 60 Little League games. The only one I remember is one game. We played Whit Floor Covering, the pitcher was Mark Warner, and he struck out 18 of us. That's the only game I remember. I was the leadoff guy. That was not the highlight of my career. But it doesn't matter.
So how do I bring that intensity to that? How do I bring that to that moment? How do I not say I'm old, I'm irrelevant, the world's changing around me? It is changing around you, but it's all coming back to the same thing. Give change, show up on time, have a smile. You're top 10%, buddy.
So in that whole retirement thing, you've got that season. Deuteronomy 34: Moses was a servant of God and he died in Moab. Moses was 120 when he died. This is discouraging—the next sentence. And yet his eyes weren't weak and his strength wasn't gone. That discourages me. But now Joshua filled in. Joshua was Gene Bartow—he's following John Wooden in this deal. What does he do? And what we get is Moses prepared him for that.
Think Small, Make a Difference
There's a phrase that I try to use over and over again with our leaders and that is think small. Don't try to think of these gigantic programs. Change that life. Change that kid.
I came across something the other day. I haven't done anything with it. I haven't presented it to Sandy yet. I'm going to present it to you first. This is probably strategically a bad move. But I said, you know what? I just read in 23 states, morning daycare is higher than university cost. Think about that. Morning daycare for your kids is higher than university cost. I said we need to find some single mom and scholarship her kid to nursery school. That's not going to change the world.
I saw Phil Knight just gave the largest single individual contribution to the University of Stanford, interestingly enough. Well, we're not Phil Knight going to give $400 million, but see what difference that makes. You got a little bit of time and you got a little bit of energy.
Simple Moments, Lasting Impact
The boys get out on Wednesday, they get out at 1, and I got a text from Haley at 1:30. The boys want to come over and hang out this afternoon. So they come in, and I know exactly how this is going to go. He was going to tell me how smart he is and what play he made the other night and how school—they got a conflict. They got a baseball game and the school summer show the same night. So I said, well, what are you going to do? And he said, well, the ball game. And I said, well, who makes that decision at your house? You don't make that decision, do you? And he said, no.
I said, what are you singing for your summer song? Here you go. We didn't do this at Holy Family Grade School. I said, what's your summer song? He said, well, Bob Marley. I said, well, we're going to have parents loaded in the back of the room and who knows what's going on at this deal.
Then Braden said, can we watch Aerial America, which is a history thing. And I said, if we do, we lose Yale because Yale is not going to sit for this. But we sat there for 40 minutes. It took nothing. I was going to sit there anyway. Then Haley just texted and said he just could sit there forever and watch this stuff with you. You have that opportunity.
Paul's Life-Changing Perspective
There's one more case study, and I'm going to guess I got three minutes. It's in Philippians 3, and his name is Paul. And what happens to Paul is, I use language that is kind of Christianese, so it may lose some of you, is he gets saved. And now everything changes, because now my whole life changes.
I just saw a poster in the restroom for a conference on singleness that Fuller Seminary is doing. So all of a sudden, my Christianity affects my singleness, or my business, or the way I play, or the way I think. Is that my faith, and that's one of the great things about this generation.
I mean, I'm not a super hopeful guy. I don't look down the slate of candidates that are left for president and go, man, I can just feel there's an Abraham Lincoln in here somewhere. I don't know, but my hope is the church, and especially the young guys in the church who get that our faith incorporates into our lives.
Lessons from the Centenarians
So a little bow on this to give you something to walk away with: they surveyed 50 people who were at least 100 years old, and they said, if you had your life to live over again, what would you do differently? Here were the top three answers, not scientific.
Number one, I would think more. I would ask why. I would—my word—I would ponder. I wouldn't just react. I'd have an answer to the why do you do that question. I'd think. And again, one of the beauties...
As we get a little bit older, it seems to me we have time to think. We can block out the noise and block out the distractions and turn off the TV—I'm talking to myself here—and turn off the TV and turn off the radio.
What We'd Do Differently
Here's the second thing, and this was interesting. They said, "I would risk more. I wouldn't just run Woody Hayes. I'd run the West Coast offense with a flavor in it." It's not saying I would be reckless—I would jump out of a plane without a parachute—but I wouldn't play it so close to the vest.
It seems to me, and it certainly is in my life, I can't be the only one, that many people sit at the end of their life and review it and say, "I wonder what would have happened if I would have." That was one of the things that was so exciting when I got to Arizona. Everywhere you went, you said to somebody, "Where are you from?" And it was somewhere else. Now, it's not like that now. Now, you got a lot of, like my kids, "I'm from here." Well, how'd you get out here? It was always, usually, a broken relationship, but there was always a story. There was always a chance. It wasn't pioneer, but it was close.
I was talking to a guy the other day, and He said, "I'm 37 years old, and I'm getting ready to change careers, and I got to get it right, because this will be the last career change of my life." I said, "It's not even going to be the last career change of the year, probably." But that risk, and it seems more now with opportunities.
Creating a Lasting Legacy
And the last thing they said, and this is huge, is "I would do things that would last beyond my lifetime." Last week, I did three funerals: a kid 24, a guy 74, and Dr. Pertzer, 94. And Dr. Pertzer was interesting. I didn't know—I know Paul a little bit, Tom, barely. But they asked if I would do it, and it was an honor to do it, and I'd met him once, but I'd only heard great things.
These funerals are so depressing for me. They say this: if somebody says this at my funeral, you know this guy's a liar. Don't buy a car from him, a house from him, or anything. Here's what they said—the first guy said, "All the time I knew him, he never once complained." What kind of person are you? And then a guy stood up, and he was an old guy, and Dr. Pertzer's 94, and this old guy stood up and said, "I've been mentoring Dr. Pertzer for seven years." I thought, how cool is that?
You see, those people in your life, those things that go beyond your lifetime—this doesn't preclude getting involved in business and making money and being successful and playing golf and doing all the old things.
Four Practical Pieces of Advice
So I got four things—I'm late, I know that, but my timing's off, I'll get it back. I had four things I wrote real quickly, real practical advice.
Don't ever plan to stop working. You may stop working for money, but you have to retire from something to something. Recreate to enhance your work, not work to finance your recreation. You need time off, you need to rest, you can't just go. But it's to get back in the game.
Number three: if money's your only motivation, be careful. Quit, change your lifestyle—it'll gobble you up. And four: whatever you're planning to do someday, you need to do today.
As I say this, I do this giant disclaimer. I say this as somebody who's convinced all of this is true and knows it's true, and I'm certain it's true, but I'm having a hard time doing it in my own life. I have a hard time. The guy at dinner last night said, "How can I help you, and how can I pray for you?" And I said, "Well, it's always help," but I said, "I need something. I know what I do best, and I think it's this. I need a spark," and I think I speak for everybody in that.
Let me pray. Father, thank You to be back. Thank You for these people, and thank You that we never retire, that You use us to the very end. Do it for Your glory, we pray in Christ's name, amen.