You’re especially right about how our work often provides many opportunities for witnessing. Our choices and attitude at work can share the light of Jesus (or cast a shadow if we do not walk in love). When we completely eliminate work from our schedule, we also eliminate those opportunities. The key is to either keep some of the work or provide yourself with other opportunities to witness. Thanks again for sharing!

I COMPLETELY AGREE with Mike’s postion that retirement will be an unreachable goal for most. Most of my posts and comments on retirement reflect this view, and recommend preparation.

It isn’t just the absence of defined benefit pension plans or inability to save money, but also that we’re not too far from a collective train wreck on healthcare. That’s a major component of post-65 budgets, and no matter how it unfolds, the likelihood is that we’ll be paying more at all ages.

It would be more constructive and less stressful if we could focus on semi-retirement rather than the outright version. That would include keeping career and business skills current, living beneath our means, focusing more on health to insure that we’ll be productive, staying out of debt, and yes, savings. But not savings as in millions of dollars so that we can retire in comfort to a tropical beach.

God calls on us to be productive at all stages of life, and I think we overlook that we often witness to others through and in our work. When we lose that in order to cloister ourselves in spendid isolation, a whole lot of other witnessing and fellowship opportunities go with it.
Kevin@OutOfYourRut´s last blog ..Build Savings or Payoff Debt – Which Comes First?