Posted on 02/24/2011 9:55:30 PM PST by BenLurkin
Establish smart spending habits. Live like you're poor. How do you do that? Drive your cars into the ground, don't eat out very much, avoid expensive and potentially unhealthy processed foods, buy food in bulk, buy just enough clothes to fit your needs, and use public transportation. ... Use credit cards only as a convenience to avoid carrying cash; limit your credit card spending so that you can easily pay off the balance each month. Make every dollar count with your spending, so you can free up money to invest in the future.
Get healthy. One of the best things you can do for your retirement years is to establish lifelong, healthy, eating and exercise habits. Doing so won't increase your spending, but it will go a long way to preventing the depletion of your financial resources in your retirement years due to high bills for medical and long-term care expenses.
Save at least 10 percent of your pay for your retirement. This includes any match you might get from your employer. For example, suppose your employer matches dollar for dollar on the first four percent of pay for your contributions. In this case, you'll need to save six percent of your pay — four percent to get the four percent match, plus two percent to get up to 10 percent. Save this amount for 30 or more years, and you'll most likely get in the ballpark of having accumulated enough money for retirement. If you've got the time or patience, it would be better to use an online retirement planning calculator to get a more accurate estimate your savings needs. Invest your retirement savings in a good target date fund, unless you have the time and skill to learn about investing and constantly monitor your investments.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
Don’t! Many keep working at something till they kick.
Gold.
Save at least 10 percent of your pay for your retirement. This includes any match you might get from your employer. For example, suppose your employer matches dollar for dollar on the first four percent of pay for your contributions. In this case, you’ll need to save six percent of your pay — four percent to get the four percent match, plus two percent to get up to 10 percent.
I personally think that saving 10 percent regardless of what the employer puts in is a better way to go. Now after all of that, pray that when your son wants to retire, the stock market doesn’t crash. That is my only worry about stock market being used for retirement (what other option do you have really). With Social Security eventually going to stock market, it will be having all eggs in one basket but again what choice will anyone have.
Make sure to save some dough because Obamacare requires an average $250 per month or else the IRS will come a callin’...
*Live at a room and board instead of an apartment.
*Buy food in bulk quantities for you and your family.
*Always buy used cars.
*Use your computer for your entertainment.
*Download movies.
*Download music.
*Get certifications and turn those skills into your own side business.
Good advice for those who want to waste their youth eating Top Ramen sandwiches in the expectation that their lives won't be cut short leaving them free to live their old and weak years in what will sure to be some archaic understanding of 'comfort'.
Not burdening yourself with unsupported debt is good advice, but the rest of that stuff looks like a recipe to live your life in the background like a schlub.
But I understand completely that not everyone can live their life like Errol Flynn.
I think the stock market is the last place on earth anyone should put their money. Put it all in the bank and save it there, don’t put it all in investments. It’s the highest possible risk area and I for one shy away from it.
” the depletion of your financial resources in your retirement years due to high bills for medical and long-term care expenses.”
And supporting endless out of wedlock children on welfare via single mothers. You have a good point on not making the youth of this nation live on Ramen noodles if they can avoid it.
This is tongue and cheek....having said that...spend everything as you get it. Live paycheck to paycheck. The less you have in your bank account, the less unhidable assets you have, the more you can live off the government. Social security will be means tested, who know’s maybe someday your 401K will be means tested. Healthcare will be means tested.
....or buy lots of gold and hide it in a hole somewhere.
work for the govt....period...nothing will beat the bennies and wages and pensions....
1. Get a haircut.
2. Get a job.
3. Keep the job.
-PJ
What's the point? Abandon the spirit of youth to investing in someone else's future by letting them play with your money while you eat beanie-weenies for dinner, and somehow this will be redeemed for the rewards of wearing a snappy tuxedo and silk top hat when you're a geriatric walking the mall at 7am before the stores open? Oh yay. Where do I sign up?
Personally, I think that the best recipe is to die completely broke: If you've run out your last dollar at the moment you've taken your last breath, you've won the game.
My reasoning is that since 'time is money', any leftover money you have at death is representative of wasted time.
Now that I've read this old boring advice, can I please see the column written by David Lee Roth or some other celebrity who told his old man to shove it and ran away from home to start a garage band that would rise to become the most sensational in rock music? Something more inspiring like that, please.
Banks are absolute shit. The guy mentioning gold or precious metals has a better idea here. In 2011 or 2012 - the dollars in those banks may be totally worthless. Precious metals will still have a value.
1) Don’t buy underwear. If cavemen didn’t need it, why should you.
No.
That's funny.
Do you really think the Federals (both Republican and Democrat) would willingly give up their own private slush fund?
(I think not.)
As Tom Petty memorably said, You don’t have to live like a refugee.
I have been under the poverty line for most of my life, but honestly, live a little once in a while.
I don’t want to die broke; I’d like something to leave my kids. They are worth it.
That said, I think you are spot on about the inability to enjoy the bulk of your largesse in your latter years. I envision living sort of small when I am up in my 80s. I’d like a small apartment that requires little cleaning, no yard work, and I doubt I’ll travel. I won’t want to drive so I’d try to get stuff delivered once a week, or maybe have a child or two take me on well organized errands.
If I live that long.
I’ve known many by this point who lived quite healthy lives but got cancer, had heart trouble, or were in an accident anyway.
I think I’d like to spend the best part of my money when I am young enough (50s and 60s?) to travel and see well and drive and so forth, but old enough that my minor children are grown and stable.
Even my calorie needs are lower when I’m older, you know? And I have notice that a lot of good food like rich food and good steaks just aren’t sought after by the time you are 80.
So I’d advocate a middle ground, certainly keep up health insurance and long term care insurance and have savings, but don’t like like a miser and then get cancer at 55 like friends of mine have and never got to enjoy a dime of it.
Don’t bother planning for retirement at that age. At least not in the normal sense. Savings in US dollars are soon to be wiped out in more than one way. All other methods of planning for “it” can be rather complex, and involve risks as well.
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