Tag Archives: saving

7 Retirement savings tips to avoid regret

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Depositphotos_6339647_xsFrom the Chicago Financial Planner, Roger Wohlner, comes these seven retirement savings tips designed to stave off regret.

Wohlner (@rwohlner on Twitter) cites a recent survey that found 52% of those approaching retirement said they wish they started saving for the future sooner. 47% wished they had saved more of their pay check and 34%  regretted not saving more aggressively. As a result of all this, more than two thirds (68%) of those nearing retirement said they’re not prepared for what’s to come. Therefore, 42% of those between 55 and 64 plan to keep working, at least in a  part-time job.

Here are the 7 tips. Click on the link above for full detail on each tip.

1.) Start early.

2.) Increase your contributions.

3.) Start a self-employed retirement plan.

4.) Contribute to an IRA. [RRSP in Canada.]

5.) Don’t ignore old retirement accounts.

6.) Beware of toxic rollovers.

7.) Avoid high-cost financial products.

Guerrilla Frugality & Froogers

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LunchEarlier this fall, I gave a short interview to robo-adviser/light advice firm NestWealth.com about financial independence, ETFs and the term I often use in Findependence Day: guerrilla frugality. You can find it here.

I first used the term “guerrilla frugality” in a personal finance column in the Financial Post. The idea was that early retirement (or findependence) requires a sort of super-frugality.

Guerrilla warfare and guerrilla marketing are both phrases already in the public lexicon. I reasoned that as consumers, we’re constantly besieged by the “guerrilla marketing” efforts of well-heeled advertisers and stealth marketers. So in order to spend less than you earn consistently, in order to save and invest the difference, you need to become super-frugal and practice “guerrilla frugality.”  (Note, it’s not “gorilla,” which some readers have mistakenly used in their correspondence with me. Gorilla is the ape!)

In the book, we talk (in war terms) of donning the battle fatigues of the “Frugality Guerrilla,” which we shortened to “Frooger.”

I’ve used the photo of a brown-bag lunch to illustrate this blog, since the character in the novel starts to brown bag it once he decides he wants to be “findependent” by age 50. In his guest post here at the Hub last week, millennial Sean Cooper also describes how he “brown bagged” it (among many other frugal endeavours) to accelerate his mortgage pay down campaign.

Formal definitions in the Glossary of the new ebooks

In the glossary to two new e-books published earlier this month, we offer these two definitions:

Guerrilla Frugality: A term invented by the author to describe the “warlike” mentality of being super-frugal in order to resist the strong consumption messages of America’s markets and advertisers.

Frooger (Frugality Guerrilla): An invented term in this book describing anyone highly committed to being frugal and saving money.

US fee-only financial planner Sheryl Garrett used the term “frooger” in both her foreword to the US edition of Findependence Day, published in 2013, as well as the new US ebook. Because it appears near the front, you can read Sheryl’s foreword free by clicking on the “Look Inside” feature on either the full book or the abbreviated e-book edition.

The one-page guide to Findependence

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grs_titleConsidering that I once put an entire financial plan into a single tweet, it shouldn’t be too surprising that there exists a one-page guide to Financial Independence.

This one-page guide to Financial Independence is from J.D. Roth’s Get Rich Slowly site. (naturally, I would call it the one-page guide to Findependence!) Naturally, the strategy revolves around that most basic premise of personal finance: live below your means and spend less than you earn: much much less. So that you can save much much more. Not just the modest 10 to 20% that most people shoot for in their IRAs or RRSPs: Roth suggests saving at least 50% of your income, and preferably up to 70%.

Extreme? Indeed, Roth calls it Extreme Saving but that’s also the kind of savings levels that     Extreme Early Retirement gurus like Mr. Money Moustache and Jacob Lund Fisker advocate. The latter’s book can be found here.

As per the philosophy of this site, I would call this Extreme Early Findependence, not Extreme Early Retirement, which is why we call one of our soon-to-launch discussion forums Extreme Early Findependence.

Get out of debt in your 20s or 30s, but get serious about Wealth accumulation by 40s

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This is the theme of my Personal Finance column in this weekend’s Financial Post: page FP9 for those with a dead-tree edition. Asked when you need to get serious about saving and investing towards retirement, I make the case for first getting out of debt. As one character says in Findependence Day, “You can’t climb the tower of wealth while you’re still mired in the basement of debt.”

This means paying off high-interest credit-card debt and maybe student loans before worrying about stocks, bonds and ETFs. The sooner you do, the sooner you get a TFSA. Once you’re in a higher tax bracket, add the RRSP. And if you’re not serious about all this by your mid 40s, be prepared to work a long, long time and/or have a simple enough lifestyle that by the time you turn 67 and qualify for government benefits (Social Security in the US, CPP/OAS/GIS in Canada) you will be accustomed to living on a modest income.

Here’s the full article.