THE RETIRE POOR PLAYBOOK™: A Comprehensive Guide to Living Your Best Financial Disaster Life
By: Felix Diaz, P.Eng.
Who needs financial security when you can have good vibes, instant gratification, and a credit card with room left on it?
Money is just a concept. Your paycheck is merely a suggestion. Budgeting is for people who hate having fun.
If you've ever looked at your bank account and thought, "Future me will figure it out," congratulations—you've already taken the first step toward the dream: a retirement filled with wonderful memories, unpaid bills, and absolutely zero savings.
Welcome to The Retire Poor Playbook™, where financial literacy is optional, YOLO is your investment strategy, and "I'll start saving next year" becomes a lifelong tradition.
Follow these proven principles faithfully, and you'll maximize your chances of reaching retirement with nothing but stories to tell.
1. Finance Absolutely Everything
Designer shoes? Finance them.
Latest iPhone? Finance it.
The coffee machine you'll use twice? Finance it too.
Why buy only what you can afford when you can own everything today and let Future You deal with the monthly payments? Looking wealthy now is far more important than actually becoming wealthy later.
2. Travel First. Figure Out the Bill Later.
Your savings account is empty, but Paris, Tokyo, and Bali aren't going to visit themselves.
People say money can't buy happiness. Clearly, they've never booked an international vacation on a credit card.
Memories last forever.
Conveniently, so can high-interest debt.
3. Avoid Learning Anything About Money
Financial literacy is boring.
Learning how compound interest works? Nah.
Learning every Mobile Legends hero, NBA stat, or the latest Netflix release? Now we're talking.
Why spend an hour learning how money grows when you can spend eight hours scrolling social media?
4. Spend Money Like It's Expiring
Money was never meant to stay in your account.
The moment your paycheck arrives, help it fulfill its purpose by sending it somewhere else immediately.
If you accidentally save a few hundred pesos, don't panic.
Just order something online and restore balance to the universe.
5. Depend on One Income Stream Forever
Raises are unpredictable.
Layoffs happen.
Businesses fail.
Technology changes.
But don't let facts scare you.
Having only one source of income makes life exciting because every payday becomes a survival challenge.
6. Ignore Your Health
Health is expensive.
Doctors are expensive.
Medication is expensive.
But preventive care?
Too much effort.
Eat whatever you want, never exercise, and sleep whenever Netflix asks, "Are you still watching?"
Your future self loves surprises.
7. Never Invest in Yourself
Courses?
Certifications?
Learning new skills?
Why improve your earning potential when you can complain that everything is getting more expensive?
Inflation is unfair.
Doing nothing about it is a lifestyle choice.
8. Maintain Every Bad Spending Habit
Cook at home?
Absolutely not.
Food delivery tastes better when it comes with extra fees.
Install every shopping app you can find and enable notifications.
Nothing says financial success quite like buying things you forgot you ordered.
Your delivery driver should know your name better than your neighbors do.
9. Start Saving When You're Older
Your twenties are for spending.
Your thirties are for spending more.
Your forties are for wondering where the money went.
Your fifties are for hoping compound interest works overnight.
After all, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago.
The second-best time?
Apparently... never.
10. Assume Someone Else Will Take Care of Retirement
Why save for retirement when Future Governments exist?
Surely CPP, OAS, and maybe a little luck will fund the lifestyle you've been dreaming about.
After all, retirement planning is simply having confidence in programs you don't fully understand and hoping they'll somehow cover everything.
What could possibly go wrong?
The Plot Twist
If you laughed, good.
If one or two of these sounded a little too familiar... even better.
Every joke in this article is based on a financial habit that quietly keeps millions of people from building real wealth.
The good news?
None of them are permanent.
Small, consistent financial decisions made today are far more powerful than dramatic changes made someday.
Your future self doesn't need perfection.
Just a better plan than this one.
Follow @forthrightmind for practical financial education with a little humor, a little sarcasm, and hopefully enough truth to help you retire with more than just great stories.