About the Author: Lonnie Scruggs
Books from the Author:
• Deals on Wheels
• Making Money With Mobile Homes
Who’s Planning Your Retirement?
The alarm clock goes off, and you stumble out of bed. Time to get ready for another day on that job. Just what you need, another 8 hours on a job you don’t like. If only you could retire. But you can’t. No work, no check. No check, no groceries, no house payment, no car payment, no credit card payment. So you repeat the same routine that you have for the past 40 years—working a job you don’t like, that pays just enough to keep you in your comfort zone.
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So you hop in that new car you just bought (on credit) and join a million other people who are fighting traffic to get to a job. And just like yesterday, and all the other days, you sit there stuck in traffic waiting your turn to move so you can check in for work. But this time, while you’re waiting for traffic to move, your thoughts reflect back over the past 40 years. And you can’t help thinking just how fast those 40 years went by. Seems like it was only yesterday that you were young, full of energy, with all kind of plans, hopes and dreams for the future. Now you’re 60 years old, you’re tired, your back hurts, and you never seem to have any energy. All those beautiful dreams and hopes you had when you were young, just never happened. And you sit there trying to understand why you can’t retire and take it easy, and relax, and go fishing and golfing, like your friend Bob. |
Then another thought hits you. Bob is only 40 years old, 20 years younger than you are. How can he afford to play so much golf, and go fishing, and go on cruises? And you wonder just what kind of a job he had that paid so much and gives him so much free time to enjoy life. He must have been one lucky guy. Yeah, that’s it, Bob was just lucky.
Now, can we get real? Quit trying to fool yourself, luck had nothing to do with Bob’s success. The reason Bob is able to enjoy financial success, and financial freedom is because he got tired of working for a pay-check. So he decided to learn about money, and how money works. He learned that money will work much harder than you can. He learned that you will never get rich working a job. He realized that the real difference between financially successful people, and unsuccessful people is education. So he implemented a retirement program based on smart investing.
But wait a minute, you did just like the schools taught you to do. For the past 40 years you’ve worked a “good job”, with “good benefits”, and a “good retirement program”. But now that you’re old enough to retire, and need to retire, you can’t afford to retire? How would you make your house payments? How would you pay off that $8,000 credit card debt? And don’t forget, you still have 54 payments left on that new car. If only you could have been as lucky as Bob.
For the past 40 years you’ve lived in a fantasy world thinking that Social Security and some government retirement program would be all you needed. Now you find that Social Security is not only broke, but you have to be almost 70 years old before you could draw a check. But what about that government retirement program the politicians kept promising you if you voted for them? You remember that wealth distribution program, the “Robin Hood Program” … tax the rich and give to the poor. That didn’t work, either.
So what do you do now? Well, since you let somebody else do your retirement planning for you, you now get to join the vast majority of Americans who reach retirement age, but can’t afford to retire. And just like you, all those people failed to plan for their retirement. They let someone else do their planning for them. Now the best they can hope for is a “Fixed Income” if, and when, they do retire. It just ain’t fair.
Happy investing,
Lonnie
PS. This article is based on a true story, and a good friend.
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