Retirement | Fantasy Or Reality
Will you be able to retire or will retirement just be a fantasy that is never attainable?
Some financial experts suggest that unless you start planning and investing for retirement when you start your first job, retirement will just be a fantasy for you. The logic behind this theory is that saving enough money to retire on is a process that takes a long time.
This is actually only partially true. The real benefit to starting your investing at an early age is due to the magic of compounding. If you start investing early enough, your money will have a longer period of time to grow.
If you start investing later in life you will have to play catch up, but retirement is still not impossible.
Review Your Investing Budget
- It’s not what you make but what you keep that will determine if your retirement is a fantasy or a reality.
- You need to adjust your budget to make room for retirement investing, and this adjustment can be made at any time.
- Your investing should be done before you spend money on anything else; in other words, make your investing the first item on your budget.
- Have your investing money automatically deducted from your pay check and invested immediately into your 401k account.
Review Your Investment Strategy
- The only money that will be there when you retire is what you sent ahead. Are you investing enough money?
- If you have 30 years to invest, you can invest less money than if you have only 15 years to invest. There are many retirement calculators for you to work with that can help you narrow down the amount of money you actually will need to invest in order to make retirement a reality not just a fantasy.
Review Your Investment Mix
- Review your investment vehicles. Are your investments working for you? You may want to meet with a financial planner to determine if your investments are diverse enough to offset the ups and downs of the market. If all of your money is invested in low growth investments with not offset in higher growth, you may not have enough money when the time comes for you to exit the working world.
- Are you taking advantage of all the tax deferred retirement investments available to you? Are you investing in a 401k account? Are you investing enough into the 401k account to qualify for your employer’s match? Are you investing in an IRA?