Posted on 04/22/2016 10:01:15 AM PDT by MtnClimber
You should check these items off your to-do list by 40 if you want to retire with enough money in the bank.
A worker turning 40 today has 25 years to prepare for retirement by age 65. This may seem like a long time, but in terms of retirement preparation, it represents a swiftly closing door.
Compound interest is most powerful when it has a longer term in which to work its magic, and workers who fail to practice good financial habits early in their career may find they run out of time to correct mistakes prior to leaving the workforce. That doesn't mean you can't still retire comfortably if you start preparing later in life, says Rande Spiegelman, vice president of financial planning for the Schwab Center for Financial Research. However, those who start younger have an easier path before them. "If you start [retirement planning] right out of college, you could set it and forget it," Spiegelman says. "The longer you wait, the tougher it is."
To avoid making your savings situation any more difficult than necessary, finance experts say you should do the following 10 things prior to blowing out the candles on your 40th birthday cake.
(Excerpt) Read more at money.usnews.com ...
I hear ya...Went through a divorce a few years ago. Took it on the chin in order to keep my home and kids living with me. Figured I am selling my home in a couple months, paying off every single penny of debt and the left over from sale goes to retirement investing and I'll max out my 401k contributions (I am 44). Hopefully I can retire at 65 and just refine .925 into .999 and sell some bullion for play cash.
Nix the 15 year mortgage, and the life insurance policy stuff is only good the life insurance salesman.
High inflation always benefits the borrower. Just look at the $15 minimum wage and the level of government debt, and use your own brain to see that we will have strong inflation for many years to come. Right now we have an interesting combination of high real inflation and low fixed mortgage interest rates. DW and I are retired already and have 30 year fixed mortgages on our house and rental properties. The payments can not increase, but the rents we collect sure can...
While we worked, we had employer-supplied life insurance which we maxed out in case of a disaster, but now that we are retired, there is no need for life insurance.
The advice few financial planners will give is that rental property is a great retirement investment. Rents go up with inflation, but mortgage payments don’t. Sure, taxes can increase, but the fraction of the rents that we get to keep increases every year.
The key is to figure out how to work for yourself by the time you’re 40. Because once you turn 40, companies will look for any excuse to get rid of you.
“and STAYING in it for a long time so you can ride out the market ups and downs and have a real asset to cash in on when the kids are out and it’s time to downsize”
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Bingo !
Selling my family home enabled me to pay cash for a condo and I have been living off the rest of the money for quite a few years,supplemented by Social Security and a small pension.
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I wasn't counting on cancer. I never saw Obama coming. I didn't see 2008 in my lifetime. The point is, these "How To" articles are just space fillers for something that ends up in the bottom of a bird cage.
If someone is thinking of "retiring" today, let that just mean changing jobs to something else you might enjoy more than what you are doing now. You will probably NEVER really get to retire unless you win the Lottery. A "normal" working person will NEVER save enough money other than some sort of inheritance or lucky break somewhere in your life.
Cancer awaits many, strokes and other more uncommon maladies, await others. Car wreck injuries, and other things you do to yourself also take a toll on retirees. I even didn't do too terribly during the 2008 crash as I have been investing since Nixon and a 500 Dow and knew how to limit losses and more or less read charts to time the markets. The real problems for me came with Obama and low interest rates. Obama Care ruined me. My company ditched retirees ASAP with mandatory enrollment in Obama Care. Well, "ditched" is probably not accurate as my free medical insurance became $300 to $400 to now $700 a month, much more than my house note. Interest rates remaining low for more than a decade was also unexpected. You can't remain diversified if half of your money is drawing chump change for years at a time. Then 2008 hit and made it even more difficult.
The point of this post is, don't even think about retiring and your plan will last more than a year. How about Social Security remaining the same amount for multiple years? Not even $20 bucks raise? Now I have survived cancer, praise God!, But high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, bad knees, and a bum back, keep me from even being a WalMart Greeter,( yeah, I know they don't have those anymore, but you get the picture.) My wife has a part time job, but had 3 just a few weeks ago, but there are NO jobs that will pay what she used to make and give her 40 hrs.
Everything in the article is sound advice, but don't expect clear sailing in the real world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SJIh2WLOQA
Sam Kinison- On Cheating (and revenge)
Not safe for work
“they didn’t save until very late in life after 40.”
Yep! I see it everywhere. I’m 42 myself. I started earning a real salary and had a 401K when I was 26. I contributed enough to get the match. Did that until I was in my early 30s despite the .com implosion and the subsequent dead cat bounce.
Throughout my early to mid 30s, I was working at startups that didn’t have retirement plans (I am not a big company person). While I did save, I wasn’t investing properly. I took a bath in 2008 but had a respectable amount of cash saved :-). Still, I felt like a loser as I should have been much farther ahead in my late 30s than I was.
Regardless, I pulled myself together, stopped dwelling on things I couldn’t change, and started contributing the max amount I could allowed by law to my 401K (part Roth, part traditional ... moving more towards all Roth now). I’m right back on track after 3 years worth of hardcore saving (no, I am not relying on outrageous returns over the next 15-20 years). I live far below my means, but still have enough left over for my various habits :-). I will certainly be taking advantage of the additional “catch up” amounts you can contribute when you’re over 50.
My wife also has a retirement account. She hasn’t been working the past few years as she went back to school part time as well as taking care of our lunatic 3 year old :-). She’ll be back in the workforce next year. Most of that will go into investments as well.
Bottom line ... don’t put off your retirement savings. Its never too late to start! You kids out there should start today if you haven’t already!!! :-). Put as much into your retirement accounts as you can. When it hurts, add another $100/month or so and learn to live with it. You are paying YOURSELF. You will be amazed how quickly those accounts grow. Even if another event like 2000 or 2008 occurs, you’ll *still* be ahead of the game. Your future self will forever thank you :-).
Also, cover ALL bases. It never hurts to “invest” in some tangible items just in case the SHTF ... you’ll find those items to be relatively inexpensive “investments” (guns, bullets, tools, food/water, storage, etc.). Two weeks worth is a dead minimum to have on hand for your family ... I like keeping 2 months worth of goods on hand “just in case” ... I don’t live a prepper lifestyle, but you’re an idiot not to spend a relatively small amount of cash for security. You can certainly shoot to store more than 2 months worth, but I think there will be bigger fish to fry if you ever need more than two months worth of goods.
I love my in-laws, but there are too many (my wife was one of ten kids...I have SIX sisters in law). There's usually enough drama to crowd out my side of the family. So much for "a man shall leave his mother and a woman leave her home."
No regrets, though. One has to take responsibility for one's decisions. My MIL & FIL were two of the finest people I've ever known.
I'm certain Laz will be here shortly to let us know that he is so screwed.
“Get a Roth? Good lord, no. “
What happens if you plan on working while you are forced to start withdrawing from your retirement account? I love what I do ... I can’t see myself *not* doing what I do even at age 59 1/2 :-).
It wouldn’t take much for me to hit the obscene tax thresholds in that case. With a Roth, I’m pretty much free from being taxed on those withdrawals. That’s why I’m *slowly* trying to move everything over to Roth IRAs since I can’t see taxes staying this “low” right now (seriously, they’re going to go up ... there’s lots of idiots out there that think that’s good).
I hope I am not missing something :-).
Then the bottom fell out.
I hear you, Sam, but taking a loan against my 401k allowed me to say FU to lending institutions that turned me down. I’m paying myself back at 3%. It’s not for everybody, particularly if you work in the private sector.
While hubby and I were working our butts off, driving older cars, and paying off houses.....everyone else was partying and living high on the hog. Now at 60 we’re totally comfy and they’re all scratching to pay their bills.
Yea... me too.
Nothing like a divorce with alimony for 8 years and 1/2 of your retirement gone to boot. Happened in 2006.
I am not whining. In fact, I am a much happier man today. I will just need to plan on working for longer timeframe.
MFO
My in-laws were actually pretty good people. It was their daughters that were the problems ... One was just a bum — wouldn’t work, did drugs, drank while she was pregnant, lives today off welfare and Section 8; the other was a closet gambler who spent most of her paycheck at casinos, while claiming she was working night shifts (she’s a nurse). Both demanded — and got — half of everything I owned when I got fed up and divorced them, even though neither one of them contributed diddly to the home and its upkeep.
Two words: NO KIDS.
[ DO NOT GET MARRIED!!!! I would have been retired 10 years ago easily if I had not gotten spent into near bankruptcy by lazy, parasitic wives (x2).
I know, I’m a terrible judge of character. But that doesn’t mean I should empower a pair of leechettes to exploit my trusting nature. ]
As a Woman I am offended by this hurtful statement....No, just kidding, you are right!
I have seen so many of my friends male and female alike be completely ruined by marriages that have gone south. Too many of them got suckered into them and then ended up with a opartner who would not do the heavy lifting or even LIGHT lifting. One poor coworker of mine had a wife so lazy that she would not even fill out a check to pay the water bill. Even though money was in the account and SHE INSISTED ON MANAGING THE BILLS! and she even denied him paying the bills even after multple service cutoffs.... and she spent like a drunken sailor too...
What i have learned is that you have to check out the mother in law, usually if she is a worthless lazy sack of crap and her husband is a whipped wimpering wimp then BEWARE! Same goes with Husbands and the father and mother in laws.
Too many women (especially city women) all want to be “princesses” and want all the privilidges of being a “liberated woman” without any of the RESPONSIBILITIES that come with it, instead they want all the Monetary support of hubby while living the “single lifestyle”....
I more or less Blame Disney!
“Everything in the article is sound advice, but don’t expect clear sailing in the real world. “
Truer words have never been spoken. From 2009 - 2010, I was hit with events that crushed my mind and soul. I was 36 at the time. My good friend and mentor died of a heart attack, my father died not 6 months later, my wife almost died due to an acetaminophen overdose 6 months after that (please don’t judge her ... it can happen to anyone ... I only say that as I used to shoot my mouth off myself over issues like that), and a couple of other events occurred that I care not to discuss (let’s just say it was hell, but it was due to things I did when I was younger :-) ).
Never in my wildest dreams did I think any of the above would have ever happened to me ... a nerdy engineer :-). While it wasn’t easy growing up in my house (dad was a drinker ... my mom divorced him when my brothers and I were very young ... lots of that stuff has an impact on kids), it wasn’t exactly as hard as other people’s stories I’ve seen.
Since then, my wife and I have recovered. My wife no longer touches any of the crap that led to her problem. In fact, she gave birth to our healthy baby boy in 2013 (yeah, we were 39, so what! :-) he’s healthy and reminds me of everything that is good about this world :-) and she’s almost done earning a fairly decent medical degree in a field that’s in relatively high demand ... and its something she downright loves as she lost her father to heart disease over 10 years ago and the surgeon he used to see assured her of a job the instant she graduates).
If life does hand you a bucket of shit to eat, just eat it and press on. DO NOT DWELL ON THINGS. Learn from horrible events. I spent a bulk of 2011 suffering (drank a lot, doubted God, hated literally everything, lost all confidence in myself, became a recluse, only focused on work, etc.). You will be amazed how you can repair damage in your life with some hard work and a little faith! :-). Just don’t go thinking that it can’t happen again.
loved Sam :)
lol!
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