Disclaimer:  I’m not a financial advisor.  I’m just a blogger with some thoughts.

The news isn’t pretty.

According to Forbes, the United States is in the middle of a retirement crisis.

“An entire generation of Americans are about to retire with little or no assets to support them. Many of them will not even have the option of continuing to work for either health or job related reasons.”  – Forbes

Here in Canada, where I’m sitting as I write this, 34% of Canadians plan to live on their lottery winnings when they retire.  But they haven’t won the lottery yet!

If you’ve saved for retirement and have no concerns, you don’t need to keep reading.  This article is for all the people I’ve encountered over the past few years who have told me that they’ll never retire, or if they do, they can’t imagine how they’ll live.  Furthermore, they say that there’s no point is starting to save now, because it’s too late to save enough to make any difference.

Many of these people know they have only themselves to blame.  It seems the world has an “Oh well, sucks to be you, shoulda saved” attitude.  Others, however, have had just really rotten luck and their finances were decimated through no fault of their own.  Yes, it really does happen.

According to the Forbes article, only three factors determine if and when you can retire:  how much you save, how long you save, and what your rate of return on your savings will be.  But then the article goes on to state that two are within your control.  The article doesn’t specify which two.  So which two would it be?  Let’s look at all three:

How much you save:  Is this in your control?  Let’s say you want to save $100,000 a year, and your annual income is $75,000?  Okay, I’ll stop exaggerating to make a point.  Let’s just acknowledge the reality that no matter how frugal you are, just remaining alive here on the planet has a price tag.  So you can only ever save the difference between your maximum earning capacity and your minimum level of expenses required to stay alive.

How long you save:  I’m 52 as I type this.  I keep encountering advice to save for 40 years.  Do I want to wait until I’m 92 to retire?  Frankly, no.  So is the number of years I save under my control?  Let’s acknowledge that our length of time to be saving is limited by the number of years we have left to earn an income.

Your rate of return:  Sure, we can shop around.  We can invest with higher risk for a greater rate of return.  But how risky do we want to be with our life’s savings?

So what IS in your control?

It’s what you do right now.

If you’re approaching the end of your incoming-earning years and you’re worried that you don’t have enough saved for retirement, you have some decisions to make.  Here are two options:

1.  Continue on your current path and hope for the best.

The problem is that “hope is not a strategy.” (I lifted that from Brian Tracy.)  Your future self will be beating yourself up even worse than you might be beating yourself up today for past decisions (or lack of them).

2.  Start learning now how to earn as much as you can for as long as you can.

If you have a well-paying job that you love, you’re in luck!  Start saving now, and save aggressively.  But whether you are or are not, I’d recommend getting your Plan B in order very quickly.

Plan B needs to be something that will generate an income for you after you retire.  Traditional savings accounts and conservative investments won’t grow quickly enough to generate a good income unless your principal is large enough to begin with.  But it’s a good idea to sock money away where you’re unlikely to touch it anyway.

You might need to engage in some out-of-the-box thinking to put together a workable Plan B.  Your tendency might be to dismiss ideas because they’re out of your comfort zone or because you don’t believe they would work.

The important point that I want to drive home with this is that you have to start working on Plan B now, not later.  Even if you don’t expect to see an income from Plan B for several years, start now, because several years later, you’ll thank yourself for it.

Here are some ideas to get you started.  They are all businesses you could start on the side and build so that when you retire, you’ll already have your branding in place, and hopefully a long list of potential clients.

Become a consultant in your field.  This one seems obvious.  However, don’t wait until after you’ve retired to start building the foundation.  It might take a few years to establish your reputation as a guru in the field, so start building your cred now so that when you retire, you can seamlessly drift into consultancy.  (Okay, it probably won’t be seamless, but why make it harder than it has to be?)   Stay tuned.  I’ll write some future articles on this.

Market another skill.   If you’ve enjoyed a hobby for years, are there income opportunities in teaching others?

Monetize around an interest or passion.  What does this mean?  This is similar to the previous suggestion to market a skill.  However, if it’s more of an interest area than a skill, create a community online through blogging or other social media, and monetize that.  If this sounds like nothing you’ve ever heard of, stay tuned, I’ll be writing future articles on this as well.  But in a nutshell, it means creating a community around an interest, and providing value to them that results in income for you.

Perform a valuable service.  This is not about what you like to do, but what you can do and what you are willing to do.  Ideas include anything from starting a dog walking business to becoming a ghost writer, performing handyperson services to babysitting, starting a garden maintenance business to furniture restoration.   Consider not just performing the service but contracting others and becoming known as the go-to for that service.  Be creative!  Look at the business this person started – it’s called Rent-A-Grandma.

Get started in network marketing.  Be sure to join a good company with a product you respect.  Yes, there are horror stories about people who lost a lot of money in network marketing, but they didn’t do it properly.  A good network marketing opportunity only requires a small initial investment and sells products that you’d buy anyway.  The reason I recommend network marketing is because many people have built businesses that provided good incomes that allowed them to retire early.  Don’t confuse network marketing with get-rich-quick scams and pyramid schemes.   If you want to learn about my company, click on the Join My Team link at the top of the page.

Become the expert on your town or geographical area.  Start now to establish your credibility as the local historian.  Establish a blog about local sites, historic events in your area, the histories of the oldest homes and other buildings in your town, and so on.  After you have a following, start charging locals and visitors for walking tours and small educational events.  Write a small book about your town or geographical area to sell on your blog and in local businesses.

Become a flea market or craft show conglomerate.  If you’ve been interested in either but worried that you wouldn’t have the time or capacity to gather up enough inventory, you can contract with others to sell theirs.  Rent tables at craft fairs or flea markets, and offer to sell other people’s crafts or flea-market-worthy items.  Establish a niche for yourself – for example, become known for specializing in mid-century dishware or funky quilted fashion items.  Expand online and sell items in your own eBay store.   Or have your own website.

The common theme for all of these ideas is that you don’t simply execute the job itself.  You leverage it for additional income opportunities.  If you start now and work diligently and consistently, you could build up a fairly decent income within five to ten years.

Of course, it’s not a guarantee.  And yes, it’s work.   You have to make a commitment to yourself and take massive action.

Or you could try the other alternative, just hoping for the best, but I don’t recommend it!