Posted on 12/17/2004 12:15:42 PM PST by Constitutionalist Conservative
Try this on for size. You’re seventy five years old. You live in the comfy home you’ve always lived in. You play golf in good weather. In bad weather, you travel to where it’s warm and sunny. When your grandchildren call, you take them out on the lake in your new boat. Your wife takes classes in the local college and paints. This is your life in retirement and it’s everything you always hoped and dreamed it would be.
Or, try this scenario: you are seventy-five years old. You live in a tiny apartment with the smell of boiled cabbage and noisy neighbors all around. You live in a scary neighborhood and you dare not go out after dark. Eating at restaurants is just a dream. Your apartment is too small to have your kids or grand kids visit. If you get sick and you have to spend time in nursing care, you don’t know how you’ll afford it. Your life is pure fear.
The fact is that if you are a baby boomer, one of the 77 million racing towards retirement, you have -- to a large extent--your choice of which of these retirement outcomes is yours. You get the good outcome or something like it if you start early, get a sensible, solid financial advisor, make a solid sensible plan for retirement savings, stick to it through thick and thin, accumulate diversified savings of stocks, mutual funds, bonds, real estate, variable annuities and foreign investments. You should accumulate an amount equal to roughly fifteen to twenty times what you need annually to live on–with allowances for pensions and social security. It’s a tall order, and it’s a bit scary to think about, but if you even come close to it, you get to have that great retirement life.
The point is, making sure you have a swell retirement is up to you. Not to Uncle Sam, usually not to your employer, not to your kids. You have to max out your IRA’s, your Keoghs, your 401K’s and do it sensibly, and then some. And you have to start with that all important plan.
Or, you can just be the happy go lucky grasshopper in your working years, not think about retirement, and then later, you get to live in terror. Which sounds better to you? I thought so. No matter how old you are, get started now and do the best you can.
Oh, you should know I am honorary spokesperson for National Retirement Planning Week. And, yes, I get paid for preaching to you. But your doctor also gets paid to tell you to stop smoking and eat green leafy vegetables. That doesn’t make us wrong.
Yep...they don't care, because it doesn't come out of THEIR retirement funds! LOL
LOL ;^)
Of course, we do not know how long we will live; but Ben is basically saying you may want a pile of money in the bank; not when you die; but when you retire. . .so you won't wish you were dead. . .instead.
And of course; he is giving a high side and low side of possibillities - you surely can choose somewhere inbetween to float your boat. . .or tow it.
. . .and don't forget to 'diversify'. . .
Where did I say seniors are thieves and what government programs did I say are "OK"?
My wife had that much. She put 6% in an a 401(k) with 3% employer match and then put 10% of take home into an IRA until she hit the max contribution.
Do you need to scrimp and forgoe luxuries you want? Yes. Sacrafice is needed but pays off large dividends.
One of the easiest sacrafices to make but often over looked is in the choice of car. My wife has been pestering me to get myself a new mini-van for several years. She wants us to get a new Chrysler T&C. I will not do it. I will continue to drive my paid for, 225,000 mile 1991 Toyota Previa. The amount of money saved each month just in not having a car payment allows for the reduction of other debts and reduces the possibility of needing to add other debts.
And in 10 months her car will be paid off freeing up another $289 a month for faster debt reduction and increased savings.
I have this to say, Joe's pizza sucked.
bump
That's an incentive IMHO :)
Government should "incentivize" retirement savings by giving tax credits (unlike an IRA which is just a deduction) and have tax free withdrawals (like a ROTH) and anything not used passes without estate tax if that is or os not eliminated in 2012.
Yes, but in regardes to a "government incentive" I see it as meaning "do this and we will provide this" or in the case that is far to common, "do this or we won't do this."
Interesting. I guess I will be able to manage. It just is a bit mind-boggling, since I won't exactly be raking in the dough as a teacher. But, I will manage even though I will be scrimping for some time.
I agree with you about the car. I am just driving my parent's truck right now. I will have to get a car sooner or later, so I am planning on that next year. But, virtually all money is going into college, so I figure I better wait. And once I get a car, get one that is cheap enough the payments won't be exhausting since I will have to worry about student loans anyway. I may have to get an off-campus job next year though...the campus job doesn't pay very much.
Oh well. Thanks for the input.
So they keep on renting. If they had only but a $300 a month car instead they would be buying that house they wanted.
Until maintanence costs become a car payment every month or driving the car is unsafe, a beater is the way to go.
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