"A young person should be taught to start investing at an early age. They should be taught to nurture their investments so they can grow strong and bountiful, and they should watch over them at all times for any signs of trouble."
~John M. Roberts~
The most important factor in planning for the future is where you will be financially during your retirement years. You see it often! Many people work hard their entire working lives and retire with no more than social security payments and a small retirement check. They worked so hard for so many years to prepare for their future just to end up living their senior years below, or right at, the national poverty level.
We all know know the importance of saving for our futures. We invest in stock, buy mutual funds, invest in 401k plans, and purchase homes and other property. But this is where a lot of us fail. It has become the thing to do to borrow money on our homes and 401k plans, spend our savings, and live beyond our means instead of leaving our investments where we originally meant them to be.
Our lifestyles have become so intertwined with what we see on television and in the movies that we can't function without being told what to do, how to act, what to buy, and how to live. In recent years, we have been told to spend, spend, spend because we had the money and it will help the economy. In reality, spending our life savings and depleting our investments may have stimulated the economy for a while, but it left a lot of us broke and with very little retirement income.
What should a young person do today? A young person should be taught to start investing at an early age. They should be taught to nurture their investments so they can grow strong and bountiful, and they should watch them carefully at all times for any signs of trouble.
Your savings and investments should be your number one priority. They should not be used as vacation money, new car purchases, or just to have extra cash on hand.
A good financial strategy should be sound and tamper proof because the investments you make today will affect you, your children, and maybe your grand and great grand children. You may not know it, but you are carrying a heavy burden, but the burden should lighten as you grow older if you make the right choices during your working years.
If you think you are going to stay young forever, good luck. You will get old, unless you die young, and the older you get, the more important your working years will become to you. Growing old is a part of our lives that we must think about right now. We must plan for it while we are young enough to make a difference in whether we live out our later years in poverty or in relatively good shape financially.
Your financial health will be almost as important to you as your physical health will be. It is impossible to know how you will be, both physically and financially, in ten years. Things can happen at the blink of an eye that can change the course of your life and you need to be prepared as you can for any possibility.
Everyone should plan ahead, invest wisely, use available resources, save what they can, buy the right amount of insurances, prepare a will or living trust, make positive financial adjustments when and where they are needed, and prepare for the worst but live the best life possible.
We must think of our future, our retirement years, and what we must do to insure that we are financially secure, and most of all, we must teach our children the value of saving, investing, and making the right choices for themselves and their children.
It is never too late to start planning for your future and strengthening your financial health. If you already have a solid plan in place, you are way ahead of the game.