The way uncertainties in life and the economic health of the country are going, you could be forgiven for wondering if the retirement planners and the economic experts who advise you on how to tackle it all could have a good deal of control over their finances themselves. If those know-alls might believably have a hard time with their own savings plans, what do the rest of us do when saving money for a future we don't have the feeblest idea about? Certainly, you have scientifically designed retirement planner calculators and other online tools to help you, but they can know no better than the best assumptions you give them. Whatever you tell it you will make over the next 10 years, is the best it has to work on; and the same goes for what you tell it about how your investment portfolio will perform, what the rate of inflation is going to look like, what taxes you pay, and so on.
People are finally beginning to wake up to how unfair all of it is. They slave at their jobs, make a thankless salary, and for all the sacrifices they are willing to make saving money for tomorrow and the years to come, they know that there is no telling how meaningful the financial planning sold to them will be. Everything could evaporate in the blink of an eye. It breeds weariness; a kind of fatigue.
So the financial gurus now have a plan where they ask you to work in a way that completely ignores all the uncertainty. They don't want you to put your life on hold so that you can save frantically for a future you know nothing about. Instead, they want you to start saving money early, and to merely think about the things you do have some control over, making course corrections throughout your life. This new mantra seems to be, that you are to place yourself in a comfortable-enough position that you will be able to make a good deal of any future eventuality. Flexibility is now the name of the game.
When you first start out at your career, the most important thing at this stage would be to begin to form healthy financial habits. This isn't really the time to double down and start saving money really hard. Look at it this way - if you work hard at finding a job for yourself that you could really enjoy, you'd probably end up making a whole lot more at it, because you enjoy it. And that is the best way to make a good go of your financial life at this stage. If you started worrying about saving money now, you would feel encumbered by the pressure, and you wouldn't think clearly enough about switching jobs, getting the qualifications and so on. Once you do establish yourself at a career you love, you can finally look forward to putting by 15% of what you make each month. Remember, even $5000 a year invested in an IRA when you are 25 will work out to half a million by the time you retire.
The best way to set about saving money would be to get rid of every scrap of interest-charging debt you have in your life. There is no possible investment on earth that could pay you as much as you lose on a debt. Saving money doesn't have to mean depriving yourself of every earthly pleasure today. If your heart's desire is to travel a bit and see the world, or to buy your girlfriend (or boyfriend) the most beautiful piece of jewelry ever, it's difficult to put a price on that. If you put things off now, you could end up putting them off forever.
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