Gen X Retirement Strategies

For When Everything Else Fails

“I’m not borrowing money from my parents, I’m borrowing money from my inheritance.”

Take the collection of 9,000 Beanie Babies I bought when there was a bear market, dump them in the city landfill, and move into the storage unit I’ve been keeping them in.

Finally launch that crime scene-to-blood bank sales operation I talked about when I was 17 and getting drunk with my friends every weekend.

Aggressively trading in secondary-market pharmaceutical options. Or as the cops call it, “selling meth behind the 7-11.”

Gain 1000 pounds, make it physically impossible for my landlord to evict me.

Buying one of those Nirvana tees from Target, washing it fifty times, and selling it as “concert-worn vintage” to my kid’s dumbest, richest friend.

Discover that my real father was a billionaire who left me in the care of the parents who raised me, in the hopes I would turn out “normal.”

Ride cross-country in a boxcar, living on delicious pies left on windowsills by kindhearted farmers’ wives.

Get rich… playing Minecraft on Twitch? That can’t be right, can it? That can’t be what the kids are really doing.

Sell one of every organ that comes in pairs on the black market, invest in medical companies that are working to grow new kidneys, lungs, and eyes in a lab.

Hang out in the dumpsters behind a nuclear waste storage facility. If I get bitten by enough radioactive spiders I should probably turn into a spiderman.

The Mona Lisa’s pretty valuable, so paint a bunch of those and sell them.

Start a Substack. Get a million people to subscribe for $1 each. Retire a millionaire.

---

I don’t really want your dollar; subscribing for free supports this Substack (although I won’t say no to a paid membership).

Every Monday and Thursday you get lists, articles, stories, and pop culture takes.

Every Saturday, paid members get my serialized book on The Philosophy of Modern Standup.

---

Hit the like (heart) button below and let the algorithm know you were here.