A reader passed this over to me yesterday and thought it was pretty good :) (Thanks Richard!)
“A 20-Step Guide to a Horrible Retirement” via MarketWatch
Would have made for an excellent April Fool’s post had I seen it earlier! Haha…
Here are my favorites from the list:
- Keep thinking retirement is so far in the future that there’s no need to act now
- Bank on being able to work until age 75 or beyond
- Live for today, so you accumulate debt right up until the day you hope to retire
- Invest in individual stocks you pick personally. Almost as good: If offered a retirement plan at work, close your eyes and pick the three options that sound best.
- Ignore all the retirement planning tools available to you
- Never contribute to your 401(k), because right now there are so many better uses for the cash
- Keep the same mix of investments at age 60 that you had at age 25. Change is not good.
- Ignore the need to provide for survivors. Don’t designate beneficiaries for your 401(k) or IRA.
- Make sure all your savings are in tax-favored plans, so they aren’t easily accessible in an emergency
- Cancel that long-term-care policy you bought years ago. If you haven’t needed it so far, you likely never will.
- Invest heavily in your employer’s stock. There’s no doubt it’s a good company—and not at all like Enron.
- When someone tries to explain the power of compounding, don’t bother listening to all that gobbledygook.
- When there’s a big drop in the stock market, make sure you shift into bonds. There’s no point sitting around and losing everything.
Hahaha… You can check out the entire list for the rest of the goodies, but needless to say it’s most excellent advice to avoid if you love money ;)
And I’m willing to bet many of you are cringing right now at how many of these you once thought too! I know I can check off a solid 6 or so right off the bat, haha..
But here’s the good news:
It’s never too late to start focusing on that money!!
And I recently got two notes from readers of the blog to prove it:
“I’m in my 60s and finally learning about money. How to deal with it. How to try not to be emotional about it. How to manage it. We have always been a paycheck to paycheck family and raising 3 kids… It’s been a great learning experience reading your blog and looking forward to continuing my money education.”
*****
“I just started saving at the ripe old age of 52 – so crazy. I am a late bloomer… I knew it was smart but I just wasn’t doing it.”
It’s never optimal starting later of course, but life is what it is and sometimes we have our epiphanies at different times. (And just because you’re not good at money btw, doesn’t mean you’re not good at other things that we all suck at!! Perhaps like exercising or eating well or anything else that keeps our bodies ALIVE BETTER which are all more important than $$$?? ;))
But if you’re reading this you’re already on the right track, and here are even more excellent resources to help you along your journey: My Recommendations Page
Some of my favorite blogs off it include:
- Cait Flanders (<– minimalism / money / mindfulness)
- Mad Fientist (<– early retirement hacks / FIRE tools)
- Derek Sivers (<– life and business hacks)
- Four Pillar Freedom (<– visual and thinky)
- Raptitude (<– someone who will make you think all day)
- Afford Anything (<– fun / real estate focused)
- 1500 Days (<– early retirement / humorous)
- My Money Blog (<– the first blog I ever read!)
- Mr. Money Mustache (<– when you need a good ass kicking!)
- A Wealth of Common Sense (<– stocks stocks stocks)
- Why You’re Poor (<– I wonder why?)
Lots of ways to ruin your retirement, but it won’t be on my watch!!
Keep stackin’ and cashin’!! Your freedom is counting on it!
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I read this list at Humble Dollar, another good blog, and loved it. When it comes to retirement, so many people fail to act on the good advice out there that I wouldn’t be surprised if more people reaped benefits from advice on what NOT to do.
Don’t be so negative! Just buy your lottery tickets every week. That will pay off right when your ready to pull the plug to make up for all your past mistakes. It’s the number one back up plan for a sure win.
(note: I do buy lottery tickets from time to time when I have reason to physically enter a gas station and I have cash on me because….maybe this is the day!)
haha, same…
I actually went on a binge the other day and picked up 10 scratchers just for the hell of it, but have still yet to scratch them off!! It’s just fun envisioning how many millions are there sitting on my desk just waiting for me to claim! ;)
I’m banking on the “it’s never too late” theory for fitness right now.
A “it’s never too late to start” story for the heck of it. My mom was never financially literate, because as a girl, she wasn’t expected to be. I pointed out to my cousin that that was the reason all the boys of the family had their financial $!-* together while the girls were a mess. It didn’t help that their dad’s retirement plan was like many of the day—work all your life for one company then get a generous pension. She fared a lot better than many of my aunts though (that’s a story for another day!) and was always killer at identifying deals and teaching me the value of a dollar. I’m so proud of her though for becoming so much savvier. She’s 73 now, still working (“I like it and I don’t know what I’d do if I retired so I’ll work as long as I can”) and figured out the ideal time to pull from SS and puts that in a savings account. She’s always maxed out her 401k since she had access to one, which wasn’t that long—she didn’t work outside the home when I was little and some of her jobs didn’t offer one. I wouldn’t say she’s really prepared for retirement if she ever takes it but the point is, you can always start!
Totally :) And at least she is enjoying it!! Some people thrive much better with keeping jobs than others… You always hear about people dying shortly after retiring and getting into slumps :(
Ha ha, a couple of these were totally me first starting out on my first “real” job post-college (as a teacher). The State was phasing out pensions and gave me 3 options for retirement, and I just picked one without knowing *too* much about it (although I got lucky and ended up picking the best one, even though I wouldn’t really know that until years later!). I also just chose my index/stock ratios based on something I’d heard Dave Ramsey stuff, and while there are definitely worse ways to go, I still could have been much smarter about things…as I learned when we got our retirement portfolios looked at by a professional last year :) Always stuff to learn!
And all things better to learn while you’re nice and young too vs later when you’re gray! :)
What are your favorite money podcasts?
I don’t actually listen to podcasts much, but I’m partial to Paula Pant’s “Afford Anything” since I used to co-host it with her, and then there’s also the SUPER popular (and for good measure) – “Choose FI” show.
Here’s also a list of them when we polled the blogging community a couple years back:
https://directory.rockstarfinance.com/personal-finance-podcasts
“Cancel that, long-term, health-care policy. If you haven’t needed it yet you probably never will.”
Reminds me of our past situation. I was retiring in June. We had health insurance for 25 years. We would have no health insurance for July, but pick it up again in August. What could possibly happen in 30 days? Nothing major happened in 25 years! I wasn’t able to retire in June. Good thing! In June my wife went in just to have an old lump looked at. No big deal. That small lump had been there for 20 years. The lump was malignant and she had three surgeries in 10 days. You never know what will happen and when it will happen. Just like older cars, older humans also break down. Unlike older cars repair on older humans is very expensive!
And that right there is EXACTLY why you don’t risk this stuff, wow…
Thanks for sharing this to scare off all us young ones!! And for making me laugh with that last line there too, haha…. You’re too much sometimes, man ;)
We ignore advice until it’s too late and it hurts. I used to believe some of these, made my share of mistakes which motivated me to learn a lot about personal finance by reading blogs.
That is true… sometimes the only way to learn is to do it the hard way :)
to be honest, I have no plans of retiring. The side hustle millionaire mentality has me wanting to work until I get old and gray. The side hustle millionaire mindset keeps me going online because there’s too many millions of dollars in long $ gUaP $ to be made in silence. Agree?
No, haha…
I want to be able to enjoy the things money brings instead of chasing it my whole life :)