I Have Not Saved For Retirement Am I Too Old
So you are in your mid thirties or forties or even fifties and you have not saved for retirement. Well now is the time to start inventing a time machine.
In all honesty it is not too late although some may say so. It will just take more work and some ingenuity to be able to retire at your goal. It is wholly possible though.
There are many roads to retirement and most have to either do with time or money.
A Penny Saved Is A Penny Earned
The first method most experts will tell you is to cut your expenses and start saving pronto. Now this is good advice honestly. I can not knock it. The problem is it doesn’t take into account how much you are earning. It just assumes that you are making enough to cut back. What if you are living paycheck to paycheck and have no savings because you are tapped out with your meager wage. Then this will not help you in the slightest will it.
Here is the method for those who want to try it. Cut severely back and set yourself a financial goal. Plan to pay off everything you do not want to have a mortgage hanging over your head in retirement. Then roll your money into investments that will grow your money. More on that later.
Invest In An IRA
So many people will give you this advice and at first I thought it was the way to go. Now though I am a little skeptical. You see IRAs and 401ks are similar yes they can grown your money but the fees and the percentage returned can be limiting and can eat away at your retirement. Now they are by no means as bad as a 401k but you must really read over the terms and make sure you are getting a good plan. Also your financial future is dependent on the stock market. There is no guarantee of return and you could end up in the negative if you invest poorly. If you are invested in one company and they go under they are taking your money with them.
Contribute As Much As You Can Into Your 401k
Now lets get this out of the way there are some 401ks that are good. With that said there are some 401ks that were designed by blood sucking vampires only interested in making themselves a buck and your interests don’t even cross their mind. “But they are being paid to ensure my retirement.” I hear you cry. To that my answer is not really. They provide a service and nothing else. They provide a 401k just like a person who provides insurance they don’t care if it covers everything they just want your money. So certain establishments that offer 401ks hike up their fees and do not tell you. If your fees are above 1% then they can take as much as two thirds of your potential earnings from you. Let me clarify that for you if at the end your 401k makes 300,000 they take 200,000 and leave you 100,000. If you are enrolled in a 401k I suggest you read the terms and determine how much the fees are and decide from there. If there is an employee match pay as much into it to get that but then invest in other avenues.
Invest In Land
Now this is a great way to make your money grow. If you buy a rental property and collect money from that you can see a very good return on your investment in a short amount of time. The other beauty of it is for the most part it is inflation proof. Everyone will need a place to live and the market adjusts to inflation pretty evenly rent will always go up in most places and if you stay with the trend you will have a place that not only will generate a consistent income but also adjust to a rising market.
Now lets mention some down sides. First you need to get the property for a deal. It is worthless to you if you invest a ton of money into it and you are still paying it off even after you retire. There are many ways to get property for a deal and I will cover that in a later post. Another problem is maintenance. Some house related issues are expensive. You can save money by fixing it yourself but there is also your time invested as well. There is no way to mitigate this entirely things will wear out and get old and need to be replaced. Another thing is bad tenants sometimes you have those wonderful tenants who treat the place with respect and leave it cleaner and nicer than they received it. Then sometimes you get the horrible tenants who decide to have a competition as to who can punch a bigger hole in the wall. Or they invite their entire family of 20 into your small one bed room apartment. There are no perfect ways to avoid some things but running a back ground check on your tenants and asking for a high deposit can certainly ensure that the people who come in to your apartments are a little better than some others.
Get An Alternate Source Of Income
Now this is more of a time investment than anything else. I you don’t have time or money to invest than my heart goes out to you. If you can try and find a better paying job or maybe even just move to an area that has better pay and lower living expenses. I know it isn’t as easy as it sounds, but something has to change right. With the internet it is easier to find a job that isn’t local then ever before.
Now there are many ways to get more income coming in. There is always the tried and true method of just getting another job and working it. This method I don’t really suggest while it is working harder it is not working smarter. With the internet there are opportunities that are unprecedented. With some work upfront you can make good money and the best thing is most of it is passive income where you can just set it and forget it.
I have talked about affiliate marketing before in other posts so I will give you a quick run down and maybe a different perspective. So Affiliate marketing is a business where you get a website and you promote other peoples products through your website. It is better to pick a niche market and not restrict yourself with one particular product. For instance it is better to have a site about fishing as opposed to a fishing rod website. You will run out of product and articles to write about with the other site but the fishing site you could go on forever. If you are interested I have a whole article dedicated towards Affiliate Marketing also if you are interested I really do suggest my review of Wealthy Affiliate it is one of the best platforms for learning and making money through Affiliate Marketing. There are many other ways to make money online and here are a few examples. With most of these you can either keep your job and work them on the side or you can make enough money to quit and start your own business.
Another business model is dropshipping this is where you find a wholesaler and sell their product for retail then have the wholesaler ship the product directly to the buyer. It is a bit harder to do than affiliate marketing but it is another way to create a pretty much auto pilot income online. Here is an article detailing it.
Conclusion
It is never too late to start saving and planning for retirement. You can retire just remember that do not resign yourself to working until you die that is not a future you would want. So take some of my suggestions and make make your retirement a reality. If you need help please ask in the comments section below and I will try to help you the best I can.