To be able to tell your boss see you later as a free person not chained to a desk requires just enough cash to break free of your job.

I recommend that if you get a job that has a 401(k)–or a 403(b) if you work in a nonprofit–you open up that retirement account. And fund it right when you start your job.

It could mean the difference between not having two nickels to rub together after you’re no longer working. And having enough dough to buy a slice of pizza once a week at your favorite pizza parlor.

The saddest thing is that even veterans of the U.S. military who served our country can be forced to get a minimum-wage job corralling shopping carts together in a parking lot of a retail store. They had a career to protect and defend Americans. Then when they retire they could be living on pennies and counting every coin.

In fact I will tell you that even if you’re lucky to have a job that gives you a pension when you retire: to fund a 401(k) or 403(b) in addition to relying on the pension.

In my experience retiring with only a pension to live on a person will come up short for the cash they need to live on. In the coming blog entry I will talk about how to conserve cash while you’re working so that you can afford to skim money off your paycheck for this retirement account.

You can have fun while you fund your retirement. And in a future blog entry I will reinforce that us peers are OK just the way we are regardless of the balance in our bank accounts.