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.
Thank you ... we're working very hard at it! I had the whole crowd out at the polls this year, both the primaries and the general election. My 4-year-old would hand voters the card for our County Commissioner candidate and say, "You should vote for Kevin because he's really nice!"
Shout it from the housetops, brother!!!
Assuming that credit card rates are higher than your return on investments, paying off your credit cards is the smartest investment you can make.
Tax credits for retirement accounts might make a bit of a difference, but not enough to matter.
If a keeping a credit card balance while investing your spare cash were a good idea, then the thing to do would be to buy up to your limit with a credit card and put the spare cash in investments. [/bad idea
Some people have decided that money is more important than people.
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Sick and sad, isn't it? Congrats on all your blessings!
I'm glad to know that I'm not totally crazy, lol. Some people have all but accused us of neglect for our stance on the subject.
36 posted on 12/17/2004 12:48:18 PM PST by exnavychick (Just my two cents, as usual.)
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http://www.finaid.org/otheraid/parentsrefuse.phtml
This is what they are telling our little darlings. ;)
My father retired at 57. He could have retired at 49 but my mother wouldn't let him.
37 posted on 12/17/2004 12:48:25 PM PST by Phantom Lord
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Same to you! People like us should reproduce!
Marlboro is my retirement plan!
A wise man leaves something for his children's children
bump
Unless you are paying in excess of 25% interest it is better to put funds into a 401(k) if you have it available with an employer match of some sort as it both increases your savings, and reduces your tax burden. And pay the debt down as fast as you can.
With this option not available you should still put some money into a savings/investment vehicle, even if just a small amount while attacking your debt.
The reason that you should do so is the law of compounding interest.
As someone pointed out above, $2,000 today is greater than $50,000 when you retire. And thats without adding a single penney to it over the years.
As with government, income isn't the problem, SPENDING is. People (like LetsRok) need to lose their desire for instant gratification and their now now now attitude that causes them to get into a situation where they are burdened with debt and unable to save.
Very Good Article.
Regarding the NJ case you cited, I would suspect that part of the "law" if there was one that she filed under is that if a parent is claiming the child as a dependant there can be some obligation. The easy way around that would be to forgoe the tax deduction.
BWAHAHAHAHA!!!
Sounds like we're doing our part, anyway, LOL!
He's only been retired 8 months and he already knocked 10 strokes off his golf score. Lucky for me he hasn't been retired for 10 years or he would be beating me!
Oh my good golly! That was downright frightening to read...gave me shivers. No wonder so many people grow into adulthood thinking people owe them something.
Wow...nice deal if you can get it! :) I have heard of similar plans before for university/college employees. Not a bad perk of the job!
For years Joe would come in early in the morning and make us breakfast before we went golfing and he would order beer he didnt normally carry that we liked to drink just for the week we were there.
They had my uncles picture on the wall behind the bar for many years.
My friend Zoom Zoom chats with Dee Dee by email from time to time.
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