Monday, August 23, 2021 (Day 234)
NEW Relaxing Music for the week: Illumination of the Heart: Deuter (9:41) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9NNnO93F0E
Question: What is the best or most helpful piece of advice you’ve heard about money? And the worst?
Answer: Best piece of advice? Put away the maximum amount of money you can in your retirement account, especially if your employer also puts away a percentage. When I realized that I could double my investment by getting involved in a employer matching program, I went ALL-IN! Right now, UNCG matches up to 8% of your salary into your work retirement account. So I put in 8% and UNCG puts in 8% – which means that 16% of my salary is going into my retirement account. When I got divorced in 2005, my ex-wife got almost 2/3 of my retirement account. Ug… However, since that time, I’ve been able to build it up to the point where if things keep moving along, I’ll hit my retirement goal for that account in 5 years. Which will be really cool, combined with my other retirement account outside higher education, we should be in good shape. There was an article I read yesterday that talked about retirement accounts and how much to save and for how long. The thing I found most interesting was the part about life expectancy for men and women (it’s lower for men). You can check it out here:
- 5 Tips to Make Your Money Last a Lifetime – https://www.aarp.org/retirement/planning-for-retirement/info-2021/tips-to-make-your-money-last.html
I don’t know if I can say that I received bad money advice, since most times I research as much as I can before making any money decision. For example, Rebecca had someone come to the house to give us a price to clean our air ducts; after a little research, I found that cleaning air ducts actually makes very little difference in the air quality. My recommendation was to save the money, but I’ll let her decide. She has a tendency to make money decisions based on her emotions, where I typically make them based on facts, logic, and data.
Other Stuff
If you’re interested in retirement information, here’s another article that might be useful:
- 6 signs you have enough saved for retirement, according to financial planners – https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/signs-you-have-enough-saved-for-retirement-2021-8
My retirement plans are centered around NOT having (or relying on) Social Security. As the article points out, if you can save enough without accounting for Social Security, then anything you get from Social Security is icing on the cake! Debt and healthcare are the two biggest concerns for me when I retire. I think I’m good with the former, not as well-prepared for the latter, but working on it.
The Dream Dean 