My dad told me to always save something, pay yourself first. He also said as people get older and move along in their careers you should be able to save more as the kids are no longer an expense. Well, those days are long gone. Now we have people having families at later ages, young adults not gaining independence, let alone financial independence. And certainly the long storied career with one company is a bygone thing. We listened to my dad and started our 401ks with our first jobs. We were lucky to both work for companies that offered them in 1985. We budgeted, always having room for saving/investing as much as possible and little vacations. We may have lived in a fixer upper and not a great neighborhood originally but were able to move up 7 years later to something nicer but not extravagant. I had friends and relatives who I know felt that we must not be doing well. I guess to them outwardly, we were behind. My husband died unexpectedly when he was 46, I was 44. We didn’t have children. I have to admit that although there is no price you can put on family, not having kids probably made it a bit easier for me financially. Fortunately, my husband had insurance and I got a bit of inheritance from my father. It’s allowed me to stay financially independent. I attribute my financial habits to my father’s good advice and role modeling and to being a great husband/wife team on saving and investing. Also credit should go to a guy named Bob Brinker and other financial experts like Jonathan Clements, who dedicate their lives to educating others in the hopes we can live our best lives. Money isn’t everything but it can help to provide peace of mind.
I think the future is something that seems so far away and with all the things you have to do today and this week, it’s easy to push that to the back burner. Why worry about 10 years from now when you’re just trying to get through this week?
What sucks is that retirement is the type of thing where you benefit from preparing today, with compound interest and all. So when retirement comes, you wish you would’ve prepared for it when you were worrying about schedules and meetings and all the worries of the day.
Even if having enough money to invest, feeling overwhelmed: no idea how to begin or even where to find a trustworthy source on how to begin, and thus fear of making a mistake and losing the money. Then the years go by…
Maybe I am naive, and maybe I am looking at the wrong generation, but when I think about the retired people I personally know — work friends who retired some years ago, my parents and their close friends, and my aunts and uncles, and the people in the rural neighborhood where I grew up, and the neighbors in my building where I now live downtown — they all actually are very comfortable in their retirement. Many of them travel widely or have engrossing projects such as organic vegetable gardens. One adopted a child in retirement. One volunteers at a prison. One went to explore China for a month. I have read and heard several financial writers (whom I trust) say that people in general are not saving enough for retirement, and that very likely is true. I just thought it was interesting that when I stopped to ponder this question, I couldn’t think of anyone whom I personally know who is in this boat of “not having saved enough for retirement.”
My dad told me to always save something, pay yourself first. He also said as people get older and move along in their careers you should be able to save more as the kids are no longer an expense. Well, those days are long gone. Now we have people having families at later ages, young adults not gaining independence, let alone financial independence. And certainly the long storied career with one company is a bygone thing. We listened to my dad and started our 401ks with our first jobs. We were lucky to both work for companies that offered them in 1985. We budgeted, always having room for saving/investing as much as possible and little vacations. We may have lived in a fixer upper and not a great neighborhood originally but were able to move up 7 years later to something nicer but not extravagant. I had friends and relatives who I know felt that we must not be doing well. I guess to them outwardly, we were behind. My husband died unexpectedly when he was 46, I was 44. We didn’t have children. I have to admit that although there is no price you can put on family, not having kids probably made it a bit easier for me financially. Fortunately, my husband had insurance and I got a bit of inheritance from my father. It’s allowed me to stay financially independent. I attribute my financial habits to my father’s good advice and role modeling and to being a great husband/wife team on saving and investing. Also credit should go to a guy named Bob Brinker and other financial experts like Jonathan Clements, who dedicate their lives to educating others in the hopes we can live our best lives. Money isn’t everything but it can help to provide peace of mind.
I think the future is something that seems so far away and with all the things you have to do today and this week, it’s easy to push that to the back burner. Why worry about 10 years from now when you’re just trying to get through this week?
What sucks is that retirement is the type of thing where you benefit from preparing today, with compound interest and all. So when retirement comes, you wish you would’ve prepared for it when you were worrying about schedules and meetings and all the worries of the day.
Others have said it. Many people cannot see beyond the present and cannot delay gratification into the future.
Even if having enough money to invest, feeling overwhelmed: no idea how to begin or even where to find a trustworthy source on how to begin, and thus fear of making a mistake and losing the money. Then the years go by…
Maybe I am naive, and maybe I am looking at the wrong generation, but when I think about the retired people I personally know — work friends who retired some years ago, my parents and their close friends, and my aunts and uncles, and the people in the rural neighborhood where I grew up, and the neighbors in my building where I now live downtown — they all actually are very comfortable in their retirement. Many of them travel widely or have engrossing projects such as organic vegetable gardens. One adopted a child in retirement. One volunteers at a prison. One went to explore China for a month. I have read and heard several financial writers (whom I trust) say that people in general are not saving enough for retirement, and that very likely is true. I just thought it was interesting that when I stopped to ponder this question, I couldn’t think of anyone whom I personally know who is in this boat of “not having saved enough for retirement.”