Personal Finance Advice

[...] Ten Reasons People Retire Poor Other than the obvious “not having a lot of income through your life.” (@ personal finance advice) [...]

Setting money for college aside a lot of times happens to be an emotional decision. However its true that education can be financed in various ways, with so many colleges and financial plans. Involving a kid in this kind of a decision will be a good learning for him / her.

I liked your article, but think you left out an important tip I got early on.

The tip is: don’t buy more car than you need!

If you buy a house, the inflation gods may smile upon you and bail you out. But a car is a depreciating asset no matter what the economy is doing. True, most of the things we buy depreciate, but few items depreciate as spectacularly as a car.

Like many other people giving advice on retirement, you suggest that it is foolish to save for your child’s college before your own retirment is secure.

I think this analysis assumes a parent has no obligation to try to send his kids to college with his or her own money, rather than relying on the rest of us to fund their education through grants or government guaranteed loans. I disagree with this premise.

I think responsible parents who are able should pay for college on their own dime, not at the expense of taxpayers, and not at the expense of their own children, who will be saddled with substantial debt early in their careers, when it is most difficult to repay.

If your premise is correct, shouldn’t you also advise people to feed their children cheap food, dress them in clothes from the Goodwill store, and limit their Christmas presents, putting the savings in the parents’ retirement accounts?

To me, your advice is to be selfish and to shirk one’s duty as a parent. Any balanced analysis of this issue should at least mention this side of the problem.

Unlike the other Bill (post4) I thought your article was well said.

You ommited a couple of very important reasons people fail in retirement though.

“Mother Nature” and our legal system here in the US are two of the biggest reasons retirement plans of many thousands of people will fail.

Each year “Mother Nature” steals places of employment so there is no more work and often they will not rebuild.

Our legal system has seen fit (American Airlines)to allow large coporations to do away with the company sponsored retirement plans or to modify them to such an extent that employees can no longer participate.

Ofen these situations arise for some strange reasons in our senior years with many years invested in the company.

It is darn hard to get further employment when your in your fifties, grey hair, and a pot belly. You are now a liability to an employer as the cost of insurance will be higher than that of a thirty something employee.

My two cents.. and the reason I tell people to build an online means to supplement and earn an income from the Internet which is global, not tatally affected by “Mother Nature” or politics.

401k’s IRA’s are great for banks to take our money for high interest profits. We on the other hand are lucky to meet the rate of inflation with the small interest gains. The 70-20-10 percent rule allows an average wage earner less than 100k for savings, major purchases, and retirement. 300k for medical and long term care expected for a couple. Seems to be quite a gap. Do we need to take institutional money and put it into a higher return like private business?

All good points, but I’d add – living it up for today, rather than thinking about halving today’s fun $$s with future fun $$s.

Eat, drink and be merry TODAY, can be costly when there’s no money saved to do that in your old age as well.

The shrunken lifestyle changes will be harder on those folks I think.

Save for tomorrow’s fun, too! I include having my health, food and a roof over my head in my golden years as part of the fun lifestyle I hope to have in the future as well.