I used to believe the retirement fantasy propagated by the financial industry, corporate America, and the government. Then I realized I had been bamboozled. I made a deliberate decision to wrest control of my retirement destiny away from anyone who was trying to sell me down the river.
The world-renowned scientist Carl Sagan famously said, "If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you have to first invent the universe." He meant that you need the sun, for starters, plus air, soil, and water to grow the apple tree. Then you need the phenomenon of gravity to make the apples fall once they ripen.
I don’t mind making sacrifices or shouldering a burden if I know that it’s moving me forward to where I want to be. But I was miserable in my job and I really couldn’t stand my predicament.