Why Are Billionaires not Retiring
Most people today are not going to be able to retire including myself and you inclusive. This is because a lot of people do not have any savings for retirement, some people are living from wallet to mouth and with the rise in the cost of living, a lot of millennials will need more than millions depending on the currency to retire. In the United States, a million dollar or more but while it is understandable that people in middle class and low income earners have the tendency to work till they take their last breath, what excuse do people who have enough money to live in luxury for a lifetime 5X doing without retiring?
I have seen news headlines and interviews where billionaires say categorically that they do not intend to retire even when they are old. A good example is Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger who are chair and vice of Berkshire Hathaway. According to Bloomberg, the global billionaires average age is 63 years which means that there are a lot of elderly and aged people in the billionaire list worldwide, and billionaires worldwide are getting older as the year goes with the males being at an average of 64 years and females being at an average of 62 years old.
One reason I think Billionaires haven't retire even when they have all the money they need is that they are stuck to the job. Yes, you heard me. Most of the billionaires on Forbes list own their businesses, others are either executives, inherited, gotten from divorce, or got lucky in certain investments, so it is very difficult for them to leave the reigns of their companies to people they do not trust, so they run it indirectly as chairpersons even when they are not CEOs.
The average age of a billionaire in a successful startup is 45 years old, so by the time the business is big for them to cash out, they are already old. Also, most billionaires on Forbes list are just billionaires on paper with no actual way of making their shares liquid so they need to find a way to liquefy their shares. Also, when these billionaires decide to sell their companies, there are clauses that they still have to work with the company for an average of 3 years and this means it is also very difficult to sell their holdings in their companies.
Another reason why they do not want to retire is that they want their names tied to a particular powerful company in the world, as well as have their wealth continually increase either in paper or in reality. If they really wanted to retire they would have sold their companies a long time ago when VCs approached them. You see, having people look up to them is another reason why they will not retire. Moreover, when they get to the point where their companies are billion dollars or trillion dollar valuation, the work of the CEO at this time is to make strategic decision and keep media appearances.
At this point, we can understand why they do not want to retire. So when next you see that billionaire on the screen, telling you that they cannot retire, consider that they are saying so because of one of these reasons.
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