I am 35 years old. Why am I so obsessed with retirement and saving for retirement ?
1) I need a major life goal to save for and look forward too. Having goals and a plan to get to those goals means that I am working towards a worthwhile retirement, one where I can have land and my off-grid cabin 🏡in a low-tax, high-freedom state in my later years.
2) Money saved in my thirties will have a lot more of a chance to grow over the next 30 years💸 then money saved during my 40s and 50s.
3) I don’t want to be a renter, living in the city my whole life.🏢 While I enjoy the ease of public transportation and the conviences of urban living, 🐣I’d much rather have the right to build fires, shoot guns, ride four wheelers, and even hobby farm in my later years.🐮
4) Rather then waste money on shit I’m going to have to pay to get rid of eventually at the landfill🗻, I would rather be putting my money where it’s helping to grow the economy by investing, and have more money in later years.
5) I don’t trust that I will make it to my final years in good health, so I want to be able to retire at a fairly early age so I can enjoy my land, 🚜do things before the end comes. I have no interest in living long enough to ever need nursing care.
6) I don’t trust that social security or my pension will be there in full when it finally comes time to retire.⚠ Simply said, social security and pensions are both under-invested in💰 and with shrinking GDP projections📉, it’s going to hit taxpayers hard to make whole on their promises in further generation. 🙊I am fine with living frugally in retirement, having wood heat and small-scale solar, no Internet or television, and a small cabin in wilderness, but I want to be able to afford those goals in my later years.
7) People who make saving for retirement a priority are more likely to live to their retirement,👴 as they have a life goal they’ve been working for their whole life to obtain.
8) Retirement savings in IRAs and deferred compensation are generally locked up until retirement. 🔒While other investments like stocks and bonds can be sold, retirement savings can’t be touched with a significant penalty. This means they’ll have decades to mature without being touched. 📈Obviously having money in savings, CDs, and mid term market investments of stock and bonds are important too.
To assuage my guilt on spending so much on the lift kit on my truck, I, maxed out my Roth IRA today for 2014.
I had been contributing monthly but not the maximum. I had some money left over from the lift kit and figured I would not waste all of it on stupid shit like my truck.
My goal is to retire in 2050 at age 67. If my $5,500 investment for the year grows at the rate of the S&P 500 between 1980-2015, I will have $100,000 tax free just from 2014. I adjusted my budget to do that again in 2015 with automatic bi-weekly withdrawals.
If you can find a way to budget $460 a month or $115 a week between age 25-35, you’ll retire a millionaire. Save when your young.
It annoys me to see articles describing a “15 year old” as a child. A “15 year old” is a person whose physical age is very close to “16 years old”, which we have decided is old enough to entrust driving 2-3 tons of steel at high-speeds down the highway, at legal speeds up to 65 miles per hour (or in excess of a mile per minute).
A single mistake or misjudgement by that “16 year old” driving can have deadly consequences to dozens of people, including permanently paralyzing themselves or others, including burning the skin off of whole portions of their body.
Some states allow even younger individuals to drive automobiles, and certainly younger individuals often operate farm tractors. It should also be noted in NY State, one can take the hunting safety course at age 11, and can hunt starting at age 12.
Today, January 29, 2013 is my thirty-first birthday. It is exactly one decade since I turned 21, which is mostly a date on paper. In that past decade, I’ve seen some of the most troubling and exciting times in my life, and most of the experiences that have created my modern self have occurred in those ten years.
People say the teenage years are more important then the years in one’s early 20s. I don’t know. Graduating from college then starting work at my employer of almost 7 years now, had a vastly bigger impact on my life then anything I learned or didn’t learn in High School. I almost feel like those earlier 10 years were consequential compared to the past ten.
I was digging through the deep archives, trying to find interesting old essays to repost in celebration of my 31st birthday. But I really couldn’t find much that I could agree with or represent my viewpoint on the world, which has evolved greatly over the decade.
Thirty one, for all it’s indignities of life, really is a good life, with most of the rewards of living and working a good middle class life. I can afford most of the toys I want, if I am so inclined. I can travel when I want and can get away from work. It really is kind of nice being 31.
Today is my 31st Birthday. It's a rather sunny and bright morning outside, despite the cold.
Farmers Market day down at the Empire Plaza. Also my 31st birthday. It is chilly out, but with minimal wind and a bright sunshine, it is a pretty nice morning today. Taking the Route 719 express bus downtown, which is such a refreshing break from the local, even if in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t save much money. But with it’s light ridership, I am sure it’s short in it’s tooth – so I am enjoying it while I still can.
The Hudson River is largely thawed out north of the port, but also it looks like an ice breaker has cut a channel North of the Port of Albany, at least to where the tug boats dock. It’s a remarkably pretty wintery day, even if the mercury continues to insist that it’s pretty chilly out.
