Hey you all.. As I approach my 50th year of existence I have to admit I tend to think about the subject a little bit.. okay maybe more than that. Of course like you I'm spending time learning and practicing saving and investing. Full disclosure, I have made a ton of mistakes. Pretty much every mistake you can make. These are some: stopped contributing to a investment account due to market conditions, not contributing enough, investing in assets that were at the top of the market, investing in assets that dropped in value, sold employee stock shares that I should have held onto, not buying a company stock pre-ipo that I worked for, not diversifying my portfolio, had investment fraud occur..etc etc. All that said, I have done okay since I'm a natural saver and tend toward putting something in a savings account.
Since people write books on this topic I'll keep my point as focused as possible. I think for many people retirement planning has to be a offensive game. Defense to me is that you're not saving enough or you're only putting in the minimum to earn the company match, qualified plan or pension. Most of us meaning those that are making between $ 20k and $ 500k per year. Offense means ANY combination of the following: Saving 10 to 20% per paycheck into a retirement account (or other qualified plan), saving an additional 10 +% into a non qualified investment account, having a spouse that is either working and saving or going back to school to skill up for future income, having a safety net savings account of 3 months expenses minimum, moving your mortgage into a 15 yr fixed or less mortgage, paying off all student and car loan debt, not using your house as a piggy bank via cash out refi's, starting a side hustle that has income potential, finding a high interest online savings account, earning reward $ from credit cards that get deposited into investment accounts, using only 1 credit card per household, developing a personal brand, getting a success team for yourself that includes: a good accountant (or use of software), finding a fee only investment advisor, using a personal brand consultant, a virtual assistant to help with your side hustle, networking with people that share the same goals and values, reading or listening to information that keeps your investment plan on track, sharing this with your spouse, sharing how things are going and any changes needed with your spouse, putting money into education accounts for kids early and finally staying healthy so you can extend your working life, using a wealth management software like personalcapital.com or mint.com. I'm going to go into these items further in future posts, but lets just say that I think we all owe it to ourselves to be playing OFFENSE every day on saving and investing.
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