“People expect their career journey will look different from their parents,”
“A lot of people think saving toward retirement means you don’t get to enjoy life right now,” she says. “Even though I’m aggressively saving for retirement and investing in real estate, I live a life I love.”
She sees her retirement goals as a redefining her own American dream of “having your time back and not making someone else rich.”
That might mean building her own business or passive income streams rather than working a corporate job. Plus, Hinckley adds, “I don’t want to wait to do [my hobbies] when I’m 70.”
Won’t they be surprised that they won’t have any retirement.
$100 placed at 7% interest compounded quarterly for 200 years will increase to more than $100,000,000 -- by which time it will be worth nothing.
-- Robert Heinlein
I did not make a lot of money yearly my yearly salary at the last year of my work was $65,000 a year which in New York is really not lot. I did however, start saving in my 401(k) when I was 22 and I bagged lunch most of the time eating out, for example for lunch every day is very expensive, Dom and I did not always go on vacations when we first got married and we were careful with our budget the time I retired in 2021 early, I had just over $1 million in the bank there too. Dom takes home enough from his retirement and his pension that we are able to live on that the two of us pretty comfortably am I out buying jewelry and lots of clothes every week every month I’m happy with what I have. It’s all in your and your perspective on life I cook, etc. etc. we eat out but not all the time
I’m preaching to the choir here, but it’s all in how you live your life and your habits. I have a credit card with a $1500 limit that we use in case we need extras and I pay it off every month no debt
Time passes very quickly. I thought I would never make it to retirement yet here I am. Investing for retirement is one way to beat inflation. I would recommend that this girl buy a house though. A house is a very good way to accumulate wealth.
Compound Interest is the Eighth Wonder Of The World.
I may also have been one of the few 22 year-olds who asked HR for a copy of the pension fund trustee's report when I went to work.
Weighing in on a few subjects:
1. Knowing what I know now, I would have put just about everything in S&P ETF, they didn't exist when I started saving. You don't get much more diverse and low cost than that. It will go up and down but it reverts to a mean. Untouched, it will be fine until you need it. I have not seen a single money manager who beats the markets that is not a hedge fund.
2. Accumulating assets that pay dividends become mail box money generators. Companies will borrow to bridge troubled times to keep paying dividends.
3. There is no fail safe fool proof investment. Reward follows risk obviously. Fortunes have been made in real estate but it is not one for me.
4. Mix savings between AFIT and BFIT, the BFIT money hides and earns without taxation though but so do unsold stocks except for the dividends. The rub comes when you harvest BFIT savings. TANSTAAFL. Max out the match but probably no more than that. For high income self-employed people the SEIP is a good value for high marginal tax avoidance and investing more early time dollars.
5. After having had one for quite some time I think the balanced portfolio is a bunch of bull. It is an overly complicated less than mediocre performer that is a safe place for advisors to send you and they are very hard to unwind without getting beat up for taxes. Nobody who sends you this direction will ever be accused of malfeasance or even getting close to matching the markets most of the time.
6. I don't think anyone has a clear enough crystal ball to avoid pitfalls or to beat the mean very much if at all. Shoot for 3.5 yards per carry. It may not be glamorous but it will avoid drama and it will get you to the goal post eventually. There may be times when you need to kick though.
7. Everybody has an opinion in this subject and all of them will be wrong at least part of the time but most of us have to take one or two of them to get our bearings. Problem is, if you take the wrong road time is not on your side to recover. Lots of things are like that.
Just my thoughts for today. I'm very happy to see these young people investing. Everyone needs to understand the difference between investing and saving.
There is a phenomenon called ‘IT millionaires” which are people that worked in IT all their career and have a $1M in assets when they retire. Some call them “Unexpected Millionaires” because they didn’t set out to be one and they worked a “staff” job all their life. Many of them leveraged their money by moving to Low COL places like Appalachia which is how I met them. Poorer communities love them because they have money but don’t use services like schools.