Retirement Planning. How are you going to retire when you do not have that giant nest egg that they are always talking about? That minimum of $1,000,000 which they say does not go that far. That paid off the mortgage on that big house in the suburbs. Stock options. Bonds. Annuities. Mutual funds. An estate to leave your children.
If is almost as if “they” think everyone has to be very rich in order to retire and do not even bother thinking about retirement until you sock away most of what you make in a year for 40 years.
Why do they call it a nest egg anyway? It always seems like such a stupid saying. Nest egg.
Just call it what it is…retirement money.
You need money to live. That is why you have been going to work every day for years. Maybe decades. You aren’t doing it for the fun of it. I can have a lot more fun doing other things.
It is possible to have fun at work. We all do our share of screwing around at work. That is the fun part. Joking around with co-workers. Going out for lunch. Laughing around the coffee pot. Surfing the internet. Playing practical jokes.
We all do these “fun” things at work. That part is fun.
The rest? Not so much.
The rest is just work. There may be some satisfaction in doing a good job or creatively solving problems or getting some recognition or using good time management skills.
But that is not really that fun.
That is just satisfaction. Which is fine. Just don’t mix satisfaction with fun. It is two different things. Much of the work is just learning to tolerate frustration instead of how to learn from pain.
Getting back to retirement planning.
Since you are helpless against death you are going to have to do some of that. You will need to concentrate on retirement and retirement planning just like you have needed to concentrate on every good thing that you have ever done in your life.
Start sooner rather than later. It will not get easier the longer you wait. You can start your retirement planning by visualizing your rich retirement and what you need to do to move toward that.
Your mind can either hinder you or help you in all of this. I prefer to let it help me by thinking about an abundant retirement.
I am not going to bore you with calculations or admonish you because You have not been saving 20% of your income all these years. That is just something someone says to do to guilt you into buying mutual funds from him.
Your calculations for your retirement planning will work best if you do some serious subtraction.
Forget division, multiplying, and additions. Those mathematical concepts make your planning more difficult. Simplify with subtraction, especially eliminating bad retirement ideas.
Retirement Planning Starts With Subtracting the Big Worthless Expenses
- Subtract that boat you rarely use. These are just a money pit. You can rent a boat for a day. You can ride on a friend’s boat. You can pay for a boat ride. You don’t need a boat to be happy.
- Subtract those expensive hobbies like golf and skiing. Yes, they are fun. But they are super expensive hobbies.
- Subtract the motorcycle. Not only expensive but dangerous. Everyone I know who rides a motorcycle has been in a serious accident.
- Subtract needing to do everything First Class. Second, Third, and Fourth class works just as well.
- Subtract the second home. It is hard enough to keep up with one house, let alone two.
- Subtract that expensive house. Houses are nice but only if the cost of owning them is easily manageable with a very small portion of your income.
- Subtract the debt. Obviously, It is difficult to do any retirement planning if you can barely pay your bills.
The only adding you need to start doing right away is to your knowledge. Financial Planning InfoGuide is a practical and free guide that includes information, resources, and tools that will help you create a solution based on your resources, dreams, and goals. allowing you to control the risks you take, achieve the independence and balance you want, and even a higher standard of living for you and your family.
Your retirement plans need to include not only trying to pile up some money, it includes eliminating expenses and taking care of what needs to be taken care of.
You will have to do this work yourself. They will not help you that much. The governments yesterdays idea is to just force you to work longer until you are closer to death.
I say to start with the house. If you are not trying to buy an expensive house with a large mortgage you will be able to handle everything else.
The house is the largest payment. If you cut that down to size it will free up your money to have some to save.
You just will not have any money to save if you spend it all on your house. I know you have been told that a house is a great investment and that it goes up in value and you will get rich when you sell it.
Do you believe any of that?
Maybe a few people who are extremely lucky or have great timing have got rich by buying a big house and selling it at the perfect time.
I lost my you know what on the three houses I had. They were all black pits where I threw money down. Money for the mortgage, taxes, and insurance. And money to fix them up, repair them and remodel them.
If you are going to remodel a house, do it the way my parents did with their Inspired Retirement House. They bought it at a very low cost. Their retirement planning did not include a big, hard-to-pay mortgage. They just had a very small, modest mortgage.
