I've been busy and had an action packed Saturday so I definitely had to share with you. I attended a seminar on personal finance that touched on how people should prepare for retirement or better yet they outlined how people fail to plan for retirement because most don't really concern themselves with any long term financial goals. The seminar was intended for the 55+ years and older and I attended with my mother but it was still useful information. What they said was that most people get a job and if they're lucky in today's job market, their employer offers a 401K plan that we feel takes care of the future for us but that's not the case.
More on the flip including some of the concert I attended...
Although your 401K does help it basically buys and works for a wide age range of people covering all your employers employee base which ages vary and that's not working for you. You have to be more aggressive in certain times of your life with investing and less aggressive (more cautious) during the end phase of your careers because you'll soon be withdrawing the money and you don't want any downward turns later in age. You can afford to be more agressive early on when your money is sitting in the account and you're not able to touch it anyway for another 20+ years. This is not something that is widely considered. I know I didn't think about my 401K in those terms.
Basically you'll need to do some investing on your own during your most productive years and have your money work for you. I suggest starting with an E--Trade account or a Scottrade. I'll leave it to you to compare those two to determine which works best for your needs but I have an E-Trade account and believe me I don't know much about investing, I personally feel that E-Trade makes it extremely easy to buy shares of stock and it's fairly easy to understand. I'm not aggressive with my investments either and I need to be more aggressive in investing myself but to be honest I started the account a few years ago, became obsessed with watching it go up and down and would cash out too quickly and that shouldn't be the goal of investing. It should sit and make money for you so as you can see I'm no expert at all. You guys probably know more about investing than I do and if that's the case please share your stories and instructions with the rest of us.
Another thing he mentioned during the seminar was that the market crashes about every 8 years. I wasn't aware of that but he definitely proved his point and if his projections were correct then the market will be going down and crashing around the time that Obama heads out of office so start saving your money now to invest. The trick is to buy low so that it goes up and you see more return on your investment. What you could do now is research a few companies that you're interested in and make sure you also look into penny stocks and global markets. That was another important point that he addressed during the overview. People tend to think that the market they're in is the only market you can buy and that's not true. Look at other economies and companies in varies countries to invest in to really diversify your portfolio.
Then lastly if you have children make sure that you start a 529 college savings account for them. I did this for my 16 year old when she was 5 and as you guys know I have another young one that I'll be starting an account for as well and I can validate that it helped with my oldest. I was a little hesitant to create the account years ago because they mentioned if she didn't go to college then she wouldn't get the money so I started it off investing only $40 per month and and that continues to today and now I wish I had invested more. All kinds of questions went through my mind back then like "what if she doesn't want to attend college" and "what if this is a scam and I lose my money" but now she'll be off to college in another year and I get the statements from my little contributions and I'm surprised and grateful that I took the risk. Isn't it all a risk at the end of the day anyway? Your money is going to go somewhere so why not make it work for you and your kids.
Those were the main points that I took from his presentation that I wanted to make sure I covered with you. Also look into taxes and will preparation too. The government will take any and everything that it possibly can so make sure that you do your part in ensuring that your family gets the most they can if ever you pass away and invest in an independent life insurance policy outside of the one from your employer so that you're expenses are covered. I know it can all be overwhelming too but take baby steps if you have to but doing nothing and hoping it will all work out doesn't help anyone so take the leap of faith and start small if you have to but do it! You'll be grateful that you did.
On a lighter note I attended a R. Kelly concert this weekend and I didn't know how much music he put out that I actually enjoyed until this concert. He can really sing! I know what you're thinking... he's a perv and YES I completely agree. That's not up for debate but his career spans 27 years and his catalog of music is awesome! I shared a little bit of his performance below that I captured for you. I'm going to start doing a lot of videos for you guys too so make sure you follow me on Instagram at Urshadybff1 and other social media and I'll catch you all in the next post.
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