Have you Googled “retirement?” You’ll find no shortage of information. I got 236 million hits. Nine of the first ten retirement hits were about retirement investment and savings. For example: Fidelity Retirement Planning. Here’s another one: New York Times Retirement Planning, information on IRAs, 401Ks, annuities, and such. One more: The Harvard Business Review, on the “Crisis In Retirement Planning.” Here’s an excerpt from the Harvard Business Review:
“The result was an acceleration of America’s shift away from defined-benefit (DB) pensions toward defined-contribution (DC) retirement plans, which transfer the investment risk from the company to the employee. Once an add-on to traditional retirement planning, DC plans—epitomized by the ubiquitous 401(k)—have now become the main vehicles for private retirement saving.
“But although the move to defined-contribution plans arguably reduces the liabilities of business, it has, if anything, increased the likelihood of a major crisis down the line as the baby boomers retire. To begin with, putting relatively complex investment decisions in the hands of individuals with little or no financial expertise is problematic.”
Such information is aimed at a target market of the wealthy and the affluent, high-income earners with surplus discretionary income. I imagine they’re a lucrative market for the investment industry.
That’s not me. It’s not most American workers. The high-flying investment advice is for the top one percent, maybe the top ten percent or twenty percent. This blog is for the rest of us.
Forgive and forget the past
For myriad reasons, we haven’t saved much over the course of a working lifetime. Or we haven’t been able to save anything at all. Why not? Children to raise on an insufficient income. Baby needed new shoes. The family needed food on the table, TODAY, not next week. Unemployment. Babies to be born. Illnesses. College tuition. The list goes on, but there’s no sense in rehashing the past.
The investment gurus might point the finger and say it’s our own fault. Mea culpa.
Time to let go of the should-haves, could-haves, might haves. Let the past rest. Retirees and future retirees reading this blog need to move on. Forget the past. This blog, “Retirement Made Simple,” is concerned with today, tomorrow, the rest of our lives. It’s about retirement done my way.
If you’d like to vent, you might as well get it over with now. The comments section below is available for free. It’s cheaper than a therapist. Go ahead and scream that primal scream, write down your feelings and get them off your chest.
Next, in a day or three, we’ll zero in on some of the common concerns we’re all facing now, or will face in the not-so-distant future.
Retirement Made Simple 