Pain Avoidance vs Pleasure Seeking
Are YOU saving for your retirement? I'm not talking about having enough money to sail through the Caribbean or have a home and cottage too. I'm talking about enough money to keep a roof over your head and food in your belly.
Over and over I get letters from people who are a minute away from retirement and are worried that they won't have enough money. The popular press likes to focus on people being able to "maintain our lifestyles." Hey, I'm just praying y'all have enough to be able to eat!
Psychologically, we're more predisposed to avoiding pain than seeking pleasure. This may be part of the problem when it comes to making people see that saving isn't an option, it's a must-do. Faced with ads for having a "fabulous" retirement, most people can't avoid the pain of not spending today for the pleasure of a secure retirement.
But what if we turn it on it's head. What if instead of thinking about the "fabulous" retirement, we think about making sure we have enough to make do. How much will you need to make do? Do you even know?
I know exactly how much I'll need. Since I live on a budget now, and I can reasonably anticipate which of my costs will go away and which will go up when I finally hang up my spurs, I can come pretty close in my estimate of how much money I'll need every month to make ends meet.
How about you? Never mind all the blah, blah, blah about travel and retirement activities, put aside the pretty pictures of sail boats and entertaining friends, will you have enough money to eat, take care of your most basic needs like housing, and have a buck sixty two left over for the odd new pair of shoes?
If you're planning to retire with consumer debt, how much of your retirement income will those monthly payments gobble up? If you're planning to still have a mortgage, how much will your housing costs cut into the rest of your spending? And if you're banking on government benefits, have you determined how much you'll get and how much more you may need to make through a part-time job or pretty creative money management?
If you don't know where to start, or you've been putting it off because you're not sure what-all you need to consider, go and get a copy of Never Too Late and work through it. It's all laid out for you. You can't use "I don't know" as an excuse.
I don't want to be a downer. But I want y'all to think about what you're doing NOW that will help or hurt you later. Saving is often seen as "painful" because it means we can't have ALL THE STUFF we think we're entitled to. But think about what you life will be like later if you don't stick away a little sumthin' sumthin' now. Measure the pain of today against the pain of the future. Then stop worrying and start DOING something.
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Gail Vaz-Oxlade's Blog
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