A few lies about retirement, or, just a few things I know so far from personal experience and common sense.

You can’t retire with a mortgage

Well, here’s the thing. Of course you can retire with a mortgage! I’m not sure I know anyone who is retired who has also paid off the mortgage, although I do know a couple of high-earning folks who probably have. But honestly, they’re a tiny minority in my life.

My late father, my siblings who are retired, and closest friends who are retired all have or had mortgages when they stopped working.

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I think this “rule” is a relic of that post-war past when middle class Americans could afford to buy a house with a middle income and live as a family on just that one income for 40 years, then retire for a few healthy years with a defined pension and their social security. And no mortgage, cause they paid it off in 30 years and they never moved!

Those days are ancient history for the vast majority. I know some contemporaries whose parents would have hit this sweet spot. But they’ve largely left the planet by now.

You can’t be a renter and retire: homeowner or else!

This myth is also something I often see in financial articles about retirement. Again, I think this is a bias that the financial press has about homeownership being the correct aspirational goal for everyone.

This is a hard one since we, as Americans, are conditioned to believe this myth from childhood. I used to have this argument with my father all the time. He was very invested in the idea of being a homeowner – well, he was a man with a wife and eight children, of course he’d want a stable home with something like a yard for his kids to play in. Also, I think he liked the security of knowing what the payment would always be.

I have a very different frame of reference. I’ve always been single, I don’t have children or other dependents, and both times I owned homes (condominiums, in my case) I soon felt antsy and trapped and really didn’t want the responsibility to take care of the many things that you get to be in charge of as an owner.

To get back to my main point – it may be desirable for the financial industry if everyone is a homeowner – more money for mortgage brokers, banks and real estate folks – but you can be a renter and retire just fine. I’m doing it, as are countless folks in apartments and senior housing around the country.

And one last point on that – a pet peeve of mine – are those who say you’re just throwing your money away on rent. How ridiculous! You are buying a roof over your head with that money – my current roof costs about $16 a day. If anything, the Great Recession schooled us on how foolish it would be to assume that real estate was always an investment that would appreciate endlessly. In most areas of the country, you’d be better off investing in an index fund.

And finally – for now, anyway, this lie about retirement:

You need a certain amount of money to retire

Is it $1.7 million? Seriously? If that’s true, most people will never be able to retire.

This is the headline for the above linked article on CNBC.com: Most Americans say you need $1.7 million to retire—here’s how much money to save each month to get there

So it might be nice – real nice – to have that cool $1.7 million when you finally stop working, but the truth is one day you’ll find yourself older and not working and realize you’ve “retired,” whether you’ve got the $1.7 mil or not.

Usually the pundits base these numbers on income level just prior to retirement: they’ll say you should have 10x your most recent salary in retirement savings.

I think this – perhaps it’s a good, general, rule of thumb – but at its heart is the wrong metric. What you should focus on is spending level, not income level.

By focusing on income level, the financial gurus perpetuate as a truism that all people spend all of their income. But, let’s say, you make 150K per year and only spend 75K. Wouldn’t it make more sense to pin the retirement numbers on what you actually spent? I think so.

It makes way more sense. But then, of course, it’s a lower number for most people, then you wouldn’t need all these financial advisors and their investment products. Heavens! What then – the gurus who write these things for financial sites like the ones I’ve linked will be making less money.

As with so many things, it’s helpful to follow the money to figure out who’s really benefiting from this kind of advice.