Don’t shoot me if I sound insensitive. I know many of us are living off savings or otherwise struggling to get by. But my job is about retirement plans for small businesses, so I interact regularly with people who have jobs and savings accounts.

What I’ve learned: yes, of course, save money. But plan to spend it while you live. I talk to too many who have accumulated decades of hard work and thrift, and now they are hesitant to spend their money. Their thrift habits are too ingrained. They are almost paralyzed, financially. I recommend for them financial flexibility classes.

Because if they persist in their ways, they do their kids a disservice too. They sap their children of the drive to earn.

Didactic sonnets are the least attractive type, but here’s a recent attempt to summarize what I mean:

I meet a lot of people who are rich
as much from when they lived
as how they worked and saved.
It’s just as if they rode a stitch in time;
they made some hay while trouble lurked –
the nation had 200 years when will
could conquer and when diligence could win,
but we’re exhausted now and we’ve a bill
we cannot pay for all we wasted then.

I witness folks endeavoring to hold
their wealth
and pass it to their kids untaxed,
for that’s the plan that’s sensible to do.
I say they’re incorrect –
they should be bold enough to spend;
it’s time that they relaxed,
and let their children sweat and triumph too.