Green Retirement Blog

Welcome to the Green Retirement Blog. This is a blog for anyone interested in retirement. It is an addition to the Green Retirement Website. Here you will find frequently updated articles on retirement, a place to share your retirement ideas and advice, and hopefully the beginning of an online retirement community.

It will probably become evident, very quickly, that I want to change retirement planning. In fact let’s not wait - I want to change retirement planning. The current retirement industry approach to retirement planning doesn’t work. It is both economically and environmentally unsustainable. It is doing great harm to the environment and your retirement.

It is why I say, and you can see it in our logo, “Do the world a Favor and Retire!” I am personally very concerned about the future of our planet. I have three children and I want them, and everyone else’s children, to have the opportunity to live in a better world. And the way for me, to have the greatest positive impact, is to get you and as many other people to retire. The earlier the better.

I have always been interested in retirement. My father told me early on, “Son, whatever you do, don’t become a wage slave.” He was a university professor, his three month summer vacations didn’t seem like much of a hardship to me, and being my father - I pretty much ignored whatever he told me. But we are genetically related, and the apple doesn’t fall from the tree, so we share a common dislike of work and the love of free time.

I didn’t follow my father’s path, a career as a biochemistry professor, instead my fascination of business, marketing, and economics led to a university degree in those disciplines. I gave up the three month vacations, and the secure tenure of a university professor, to plunge myself deep into the beast that is our corporate capitalist culture. I loved it. Over a decade spent in marketing at both, small community banks and large international financial institutions, taught me a tremendous amount about how our economic system works. Including, how retirement products, are packaged and sold.

Yet, even though I enjoyed my job, the corporate culture of endless meetings, political gaming, and the worship of the bottom line, began to wear on me. My father’s words, although I ignored them in my youth, must have lodged somewhere in my brain - “Son, whatever you do, don’t ever become a wage slave.” Increasingly I began to think there must be a better way. And this being America their is, if you don’t want to work for someone else, work for yourself. And so that’s what I did. I started a small hotel in Costa Rica. I loved it.

For many people, the idea of owning a small hotel on a tropical beach in a beautiful country, is the stuff of dreams. And I was living it. Then again, if you don’t like working, you probably shouldn’t own a small hotel. Why? A hotel never closes. It is open 24 hours a day 365 days a year. I never worked harder than when I worked for myself, but I enjoyed working for myself so much, that the thought of going back to the corporate life made me shudder. I learned a tremendous amount, not only about starting and owning a small business, but also about living in a foreign country. And I learned the secret to early retirement.

Being a hotel owner, I met a lot of people, and a lot of them became my friends. Many of them were, on more than just a vacation, they were looking for a place to retire. Not only a place to retire, but a cheap place to retire, many of my fellow Americans felt that they couldn’t afford to retire in the United States.

I have always been interested in retirement, and I have always pursued the goal, of retiring early and successfully. Twice, I have been in the position to retire, only to have the retirement opportunities taken away by fear, ignorance, and greed. The first opportunity to retire came during the dot com boom, and the second from owning my own business, mistakes were made and valuable retirement lessons were learned.

I had researched Costa Rica as a retirement location, when I had my first opportunity to retire, and when like many others I “thought” that I couldn’t afford retirement in the U.S. It appeared to be a retirement paradise. And it was.

Beautiful beaches, friendly people, incredible environment, and an affordable cost of living. I decided after visiting Costa Rica, to open my small hotel, and work towards retiring overseas. What began as a retirement paradise, in the span of four short years, turned into a retirement hell. I ended up creating a Costa Rica blog, to warn guests and my fellow Americans, about the risks of investing and retiring in Costa Rica.

I watched as the beaches became polluted, the rain-forests were chopped down to build mega-developments, and many people were robbed. Robbed of their life savings and of their retirements. And I thought that their must be a better way.

Drawing on my university education in finance and economics, my experience in banking and marketing retirement products, as well as my own personal knowledge of retirement planning, I set about trying to build a better mouse-trap.

Many hours were spent sitting in a hammock in the jungle, and sweating in front of a computer, thinking and computing retirement. I discovered the secret to early retirement. Many more hours and months were spent, developing the formula, and laying out the ideas that would lead to iPlan Retirement.

After witnessing first hand the destruction of the environment, I dedicated myself to preserving our planet, and to finding ways that humans, plants, and animals could co-exist.

Our economic model is based on consumption, it is unsustainable, and I knew that the current approach to retirement planning, was based on consumption as well. It is why we believe that we can’t afford to retire - the current method of calculating retirement is based on a “Consumption Assumption”.

Not only is it bad for the environment, but the consumption assumption method of calculating your retirement, produces faulty retirement calculations.

What I discovered, was that if people switched their thinking from consumption to conservation, they could retire years earlier and save hundreds of thousands of dollars. In fact, retirement, I soon realized, was the single best action a person could take, to protect our planet. As soon as you retire, your consumption of the earth’s resources, dramatically and permanently declines.

Continue recycling, changing light bulbs, and separating your trash, but if you really want to help this world - retire.

From this understanding of the economics of retirement, I developed the retirement formula, a mathematical formula that produces accurate retirement calculations. A retirement formula that can be applied to everyone’s retirement planning needs. And iPlan Retirement was born.

Welcome to iPlan Retirement. I promise that my future posts on retirement won’t be as long. But I do hope that you will find this retirement blog useful as you plan your retirement.

Learn more about Green Retirement Planning - And find out how you can save your retirement and the planet!

Ramsay Mameesh