Does Your Financial Plan Belong in a Cartoon?



Learn Wealth Building on wealth-buildingonline.com. Does Your Financial Plan Belong in a Cartoon? article will help answer your questions on Wealth Building.We at wealth-buildingonline.com specialize in Wealth Building. Wealth Building at wealth-buildingonline.com provides the most up to date news and articles. If you have questions please do not hesitate to contact us.

Beep beep! When you were a kid, didn’t you love those cartoons? You know, the ones where the luckless coyote would chase the speedy little bird? Road Runner always got away, and Wile E. Coyote always got pulverived.

I don’t know about you, but I often felt sorry for poor Wile E. Coyote and his ill-fated Acme contraptions. After all, he worked hard and always followed directions. But in the end, he inevitably ended up crushed by the ineptitude of his own plan.

The same thing happens to investors, even affluent investors. After sweating bullets by working hard, saving and investing, they often fail to reach their financial goals and get clobbered by their poor planning.

Are you someone who kids yourself into believing you just won’t retire? That you’ll just zip around and keep chasing your earnings for the rest of your life? (As unappealing as working forever may sound, add this to your reasons not to follow that plan: According to Robert Nestor, principal of retiree services with Vanguard Group, about half of recent retirees left the workforce early because of poor health, buyouts or layoffs. Even if you want to or need to, you may not be able to continue working.) This delusion is a little like the moment when Wile E. hangs in mid-air before plummeting to the bottom of a ravine.

My advice: Either get it together now, or face the bitter option of moving in with the kids and dining on Alpo for your retirement cuisine.

So what can you do now?

First, get a clear understanding of how much money you need to support your lifestyle. And don’t give me any fancy footwork here. Don’t guesstimate your monthly spending. Come up with the real number.

It’s easy to find out, too. Just dig out your last 24 bank statements. Each statement will summarize the total of the amounts you withdrew from the account. This is the amount you spend monthly. Since the numbers will vary month to month, add the total for the 24 months and divide by 24. This will be the amount you spend every month on average. Higher than you thought, right?

And don’t tell me that you’ll spend less when you retire. It’s not true. When you retire, you’ll have nothing but time on your hands. How do you think you’ll spend that time? By spending money, of course! You’ll travel and you’ll go out to eat more often. My friend, don’t assume you’ll be spending less. If anything, assume you’ll spend more money once you retire.

Let’s turn to income. Please understand that a reasonable and sustainable withdrawal rate from your investments is four to five percent adjusted for inflation. That means if you have $1 million invested, you can safely withdraw $40,000 per year. Take that figure, add your social security and other passive retirement pension income to determine what your reasonable income is going to be.

Your next step is to Google “retirement planning calculator” so you can find a variety of online free calculators. Input the information you calculated from the two prior steps to determine if you are on track. If not, here are two tips that can help fix your plan:

1.Just because you can tap into your IRA accounts at age 59-1/2 doesn’t mean you have to. Chances are, you’re going to live a lot longer than you think. It’s not unusual for folks to live into their nineties and beyond. If you delay taping your retirement accounts, you give them a greater opportunity to grow, and you reduce the time they have to produce income for you. It’s a double win!

2.Use a defensive strategy when it comes to investing. Realize what Wile E. Coyote never seemed to: What goes up must come down. According to 60 years of research, a bear market comes along every 3.3 years and the average loss exceeds 27 percent. It won’t take many of these bear markets to get you off the golf course and on to the Costco welcome mat! Take defensive action to avoid catastrophic loss! I wrote a great deal about this in my latest book, “Why Smart People Lose A Fortune,” but if you want my white paper summarizing how you can potentially protect yourself against catastrophic loss, email me at neal@wealthresourcesgroup.com.

Don’t get surprised by some fatal flaw in your financial planning. Take these steps now to dodge the boulder that may hang overhead.



Stop Your Breakup Now! - Now You Can Stop Your Break Up and Get Your Partner Back in Your Arms Where They Belong!
Caretaker Jobs Online Matching. - A secure place where property owners can locate caretakers and caretakers can reach their financial and lifestyle goals.


Article Index: | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12


More Articles:


1. 6 Proven Wealth Building Strategies By Matthew Keegan
Building wealth is as simple as saving a little bit here and a little bit there. You need not have great riches in order to accumulate wealth, but you need to have the drive, determination, and discipline to successfully increase your wealth. Let’s look at 6 proven wealth building strategies you can put to use today.1. Pay Yourself First. If you do not set aside money before you start paying your bills, chances are you will never save any many after you pay these same bills. If your employer h…

2. Are You Ready For Undesired Events? By Roy Chan
Planning for the undesired, accidents and possible unknowns in life. Recently, a remote friend of mine died during an accident. I don’t feel particularly sad, but I was shocked to know because the scenario was quite dramatic.Whose responsibility is this when accidents happen? A more appropriate question should be: What to do and how to do BEFORE life-threatening accident happens.To be more practical, have you prepared yourself a will?I am not an estate planning lawyer/ specialist and thus i…

3. Read this Article if You Want to Be Wealthy By Lance Winslow
If you are reading this article there are only two reasons, either you want to be wealthy of you are an investigative regulator working at the FTC and you are targeting American small businesses and Biz Op type Internet sellers. If you are regulator you wasting your time, as the purpose of this article is not to sell anything but rather educate, but perhaps you might learn something so either way read on. If you want to be wealthy I have some advice, which you may wish to think on.Wealth is so…

4. 16 Mantras for Building Financial Wealth By Jason Parsons
Everyone wants to be wealthy, but most of us do not have anyone to guide us down this road. Even if we stumble upon a mentor, most of us may think it's a scam. Most of us have beliefs that keep us struggling financially; "the more I can save the richer I will become"; "building good credit is more important than how I use it"; "if I stay with my job for 10 years I will be rich"; "the rich are greedy and take advantage of others"; "I am not smart enough to be rich"; "if I work hard for my bos…