What should we do???
No matter which way the markets go it will be safe to assume that living expenses will continue to rise and that it is our responsibility to be sure we have enough pennies saved to cover what lies ahead. So what is our best road to success and where are our pennies best invested?
First, education reduces the knee-jerk reaction we have when markets move, yet we allow “life” to get in the way of this most important task. There is plenty of financial information available to all of us at various mutual fund websites, our retirement plan websites and a plethora of financial electronic resources. We have education at our fingertips in the comfort of our homes, but are we any more savvy today than we were a year ago, or even several years ago?
Second, some of us suffer over the decisions of where to put the dollars we will need for a time when we will no longer be working, others of us just put them somewhere and hope for the best. Surely there is some rubrick we can establish that combines our personal comfort for risk with our commitment to be actively involved in our decisions that will encourage us to monitor our success.
Most important, we need to determine what we would like our lifestyle to be post-work and how much income that will require. Cataloging our expected sources of income and determining the amount we will need to create should motivate us to become more involved in this most important task. “Where” we put our precious dollars is not as important as “how many” of our precious dollars we put to work. In order for us to have successful investment returns we must have meaningful dollars invested.
Risk and reward are terms we need to become familiar with in very personal terms and that will only happen through active participation in planning for the time after our work life ends. Setting aside enough dollars, monitoring how they are increasing and controlling our expenses through healthy lifestyles are the tasks we need to address. Success does not happen by accident, we all need to be actively involved to maximize its opportunity.
If you would like to talk about the best plan and options, give us a call at Czajkowski Dumpel & Associates, Inc. – We are here to help!