After reading many articles about retirement, I have come to 
the conclusion that most of the financial advice addressed to 
consumers is bad advice. From the perspective of conventional 
wisdom, the advice makes sense. The problem is that conventional 
wisdom is not very wise because it is based on a limited 
understanding of money. 

The essence of much financial advice about retirement is that 
people have not saved enough money. Experts warn that prices will 
go up and up. You will probably need more for medical expenses 
as you age. And worst of all, you might live 20-30 years after 
retirement at age 65 and will probably outlive your money.

Retirement articles usually explain all the ways you can 
calculate how much money you will need, what costs will go up and 
what costs might go down. (They assume that you will pay off your 
mortgage.)  They also assume that your own sources of money will 
be retirement funds, pensions, and Social Security. 

Every single one of these money fears is based on a single 
assumption. After you retire from your job, you won't earn any 
more money. This is one of the biggest money limitations 
imaginable.

You must anticipate an uncertain future in which the money 
available to you is limited by the amount of money you amassed 
in your earning years. 

A related assumption is that the amount of money you have 
available to you in retirement also depends on the decisions of 
other people. Other people will decide whether or not you still 
have a pension, whether or not you still have Social Security 
payments, the amount of interest you earn on your "safe" savings 
accounts and CDs, and the returns on your mutual funds. 

Such financial advice is based on fear. Your only security is to 
amass as much money as you can while you are still earning an 
income, and then use it very carefully before it is all gone. You 
really can't depend on these other sources of additional income. 
In other words, you are essentially powerless to increase your 
wealth after you retire from your job. 

There is another way to approach retirement planning based on a 
different assumption. The fact that you retire from a job does 
not mean that you retire from the capacity to make money. The 
fundamental difference is that you continue to make money in 
retirement and that you take an active role in creating new 
money. 

Fundamentally, it comes down to the difference between earning 
money and making money. 

"Making money" is not the same as "earning money."  Making money 
is a skill that very few of us ever learned as wage and salary 
earners. When you "make money," you increase the amount of money 
available by selling something at a profit, not because you get 
more in your pension or Social Security or from the pitiful 
interest that the bank might pay you on your savings or CDs. 

We live in an entrepreneurial age. People who have businesses 
understand that money is not only a commodity to be earned and 
then used up. Money is also a product you can create.  

There are so many ways that people retired from their jobs can 
create more money. They can produce products, invest in real 
estate, trade Forex currencies, trade in the stock market, write 
books, do consulting and coaching, as well as a thousand other 
methods to make money.  

When you know the difference between making money and earning 
money, you won't have to fear a future limited the amount of 
money you already have in savings accounts, IRAs, and pensions. 
And you don't have worry about outliving your money. It all comes 
down to knowing how to create money. You will either face a 
future of money limits or you will understand that you can 
continue to make money during all of those wonderful 20-30 years 
you live past your job.
 

Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Ph.D.
Author of "No Money Limits For Real Estate Investors:  
Discover The Money-Making Secret In The Monopoly Game 
That Will Turn Your Money Struggles Into Money Abundance"
http://www.nomoneylimits.com
kalinda@nomoneylimits.com