Have you ever stopped to think about how weird retirement actually is? As a concept, it's barely 150 years old — and the version we know today is even younger than that.

In this episode, we're going back to the beginning. Before we can talk about 401(k)s, retirement planning, or building wealth for your future, it's important to understand where retirement came from in the first place — because it didn't come from where most people think.

We'll cover how ancient Rome used retirement benefits as a political tool, why Otto von Bismarck essentially invented the modern pension in 1880s Germany (and why he did it), how the Great Depression forced the United States to create Social Security, and why the pension system that defined mid-century retirement was already showing cracks by the 1970s.

Retirement wasn't created out of generosity. It was created out of necessity. And understanding that changes how you think about planning for your own.
Next episode: The Revenue Act of 1978 — and the completely accidental way it transformed retirement in America forever.

Chapters:
00:00:00 – Retirement Is Weirder Than You Think
00:01:59 – Ancient Rome Had Pensions (For Selfish Reasons)
00:03:16 – How One German Politician Invented Modern Retirement
00:06:20 – America's Slow and Scattered Start
00:06:53 – The Great Depression Changed Everything
00:07:48 – The Golden Age of Pensions
00:09:32 – Why the System Started Breaking Down