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Retirement planning is complicated for Americans of all ages.
So says Jeff Reeves, editor of InvestorPlace.com, who wrote a column for USA Today. It was published in the May 10,2015, edition of The Tennessean newspaper of Nashville.
The Employee Benefit Research Institute, in a 2014 survey, found that only 64 percent of Americans have saved any money for retirement to supplement Social Security benefits. It says that roughly six of 10 Americans have less than $25,000 saved for retirement, according to Reeves’ article.
Certainly, if you are young – say, in your 20s and 30s – retirement is a long way off. Or, so you think. Time travels with break-neck speed, and 30 years can go by very quickly. It’s never too early to save, even if it’s only, say, $5 a week. That may be one visit to Starbucks that you would be sacrificing.
Your parents and grandparents probably were diligent savers. Perhaps they were disciplined and never touched their retirement money.
In their day, perhaps, jobs didn’t disappear more quickly than cake at a child’s birthday party.
If you are young, you face a daunting task of keeping a good job for as long as you want it. If you are older, say, in your 40s and 50s, perhaps you had a good job for a long time, and it’s now gone.
All this complicates saving for retirement, so that task requires extra discipline, perhaps more than your parents or grandparents had.
Despite all the gloom-and-doom reports, Social Security is likely to survive. Benefits could be reduced a bit, but it should survive. The question to ask yourself is, what kind of lifestyle will I have on Social Security alone? Even if you add in a pension, should you be fortunate enough to have one, it’s still not going to be that much. If you are a careful, disciplined person, you would have spent your whole life watching every dollar. Your retirement years should be enjoyable, not ones of deprivation.
Well, one does not have to rely on a job, pensions etc., to have a good retirement. One does not have to engage in risky, unsafe investments to get a decent return.
But, to achieve that, one has to be motivated to want to change his situation, rather than accept it and complain about it.
If you are that type of person, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. Check out how many people from all different backgrounds, education levels and skills are not only securing their retirement, but helping others do the same.
Many of us do not want to take handouts, but want to get what was promised to us. Promises can, and often are, broken. That’s why motivated people look outside what they are used to and find a new way to prosperity.
Now, if you are indeed young, you can save your way to prosperity. Reeves quotes John Sweeney of Fidelity Investments as saying, “we are seeing many examples of people who have $1 million in a 401(k) because they started early, they diligently contributed and kept to it.”
That’s more difficult to do as jobs come and go, and jobs, if they are replaced, are often replaced with ones paying and providing less.
But the discipline you will acquire if you diligently save and not touch those savings until later years, and put those savings in the hands of a trusted financial adviser that won’t gobble up too much in fees, you can secure potentially great retirement.
The new Voya ads talk about “orange money,” that one must put away for retirement and not spend. Designate your own “orange money,” or whatever color you deem it, so you won’t have to scrape together an old age of deprivation.
Peter