How to Money · Wednesday, August 26, 2026
Joseph Moore discusses the historical evolution of retirement, noting that people have always sought to retire if they lived long enough, but the strategies have changed. Historically, retirement involved 'stacking' various income sources like paid-off homes, annuities, and family support, a principle that remains relevant today alongside modern tools like 401(k)s.
“The first ideas that somehow people never retired until pretty recently, and that's not true. Actually people were retiring if they lived long enough to retire, they were retiring. Now that's the big difference, right.”
“So the way people retired is what I call retirement stacking. They didn't have like one pool of thing they'd put everything into for retirement. They would kind of have a series of things they would have. Maybe they'd paid for the house, they might sell their business if they had a business to like junior associates or junior partners. Often they'd have an annuity, right, which is really what social Security is. It's a government funded annuity.”
“And so those strategies from before social Security still work today. That's how people were doing it. You argue, essentially, yeah, for a long time social Security. In the beginning years of social security, and in the beginning years of social Security it most people didn't live long enough to get their first Social Security check, right they.”