The Secret To Financial Success

There’s no secret to achieve financial success.

You would think it is a big secret because too many people are not financially healthy.  They fail to follow a few steps that will make them healthy.  It’s as if it were a big secret and no one ever shared it with them.

It’s not a secret.

We’re not saying it’s easy to become financially healthy.  It isn’t.  It’s like losing weight. It takes a long time.  It requires commitment and discipline. And like a weight loss plan, no one but you can lose the weight.

Understand two important things:

  1. You will never win the lottery; and
  2. You have no rich uncle that will leave you a small fortune.

Only you can do what’s necessary to become financially healthy. You have to want it bad enough to make it happen.

There are only two things you need to do to become financially healthy:

  1. Save for your retirement, and save adequately.  And start saving now.
  2. Pursue long-term an investment strategy appropriate for your circumstances.

The second task—pursuing an appropriate, long-term investment strategy—is relatively easy. Saving now and in an adequate amount can be really difficult.  Why? Because in order to save adequately for retirement, you need to have your day-to-day spending under control to have extra dollars to save for retirement.  Put another way: if you’re saving for retirement adequately, it means you have your household expenses under control.  If you have your household expenses under control, your level of financial fitness will be high!

(Not to worry, we’ll help you get your household expenses under control!)

Let’s watch the following video to reinforce a couple important facts we’ll discuss after the video ends.

Here are the important message from this video we hope you take to heart:

  1. The amount of savings you will need at retirement to ensure a comfortable and secure retirement is the same dollar amount regardless of when you start saving.
  2. Delay the start of a retirement savings plan only increases the amount of money you will need to save.  You will have to come up with more money out of your household budget making matters worse!
  3. A couple big variables in the calculation of saving for retirement are
  4. When you will retire; and
  5. How much income you will have at retirement.

Ask yourself: Do you want to postpone retirement?  Do you want a low standard of living at retirement?  We hear from people frequently that they plan on never retiring because they know that they don’t have adequate retirement savings.  The truth is that often circumstances (like health) force you to “retire” much sooner than when you can afford to retire.

Our hope with this post is that you understand the importance of being committed to getting financially healthy.