While working every day to make ends meet for you and your family, time passes silently, days turn into weeks, weeks into months and months into years. Before you know it, your retirement is standing in front of your door, knocking harder than you could believe. This is the reality for many of us, as we grind daily thinking we have all the time to figure things out about retirement.
We are so busy working, paying bills, and trying as much as we can to take care of today's needs and forget to build for tomorrow. We keep promising ourselves that we will start doing something about retirement when things become easier for us, thinking that we will always have more time, until there's no more time to do anything.
The retirement dream you are thinking about, where you want to go on vacation, have enough money to leave for your family and take care of yourself until you breathe your last cannot happen by miracle or by accident. You have to build it step by step, and choice by choice.
I want to show some brilliant ways that I think we can all apply to build a solid retirement plan. Planning for retirement is not something you do only when you are 50 or 60 years, but as soon as you start working and making money.
To begin with, you need to start with what they called a Freedom Fund. This is a simple savings plan to set aside a fixed minimum amount of money every week for retirement. This may not be more than $2 to $5, but do it consistently for 10 to 15 years, you will be surprised how much you have saved. This is like planting a tree, when it starts to sprout it doesn't look like anything, but with time you see how tall it has grown.
You can save this money in mutual funds or Treasury bills. The amount isn't what really matters, but how consistent you are in following it up. I have an online banking app that is helping me do this effectively. The app has a savings feature called Save box. Once in a week, it auto saves the amount I have set from the main bank account, and the save box has only one withdrawal window which in this case is at the end of a calendar year. My plan is to invest the money into something that can keep making money for me once the withdrawal window arrives.
The next thing that can help for retirement is to learn a skill that can make you money without taking much of your time. This may be learning how to write blog posts or starting a small online business that can run on auto pilot. Why you need to learn a skill is because retirement doesn't mean you stop earning money, it means you earn without being involved in the everyday hustle.
Another important thing that is even more beneficial for retirement than all we have said is assets building. I know when we talked about assets what comes to mind is crypto. But I have to tell you that one of the best assets you can have is real estate and landed property. You don't want to live in a hotel in your retirement, therefore, get a plot of land and start building your house as early as possible. If you are making enough money consistently, keep buying more landed property. This is one asset that can only appreciate in value.
You can diversify as not to put all your eggs in one basket by blue chip crypto and shares of a solid company. All these can become your safety net in the future. When done well, they become the anchor that keeps your future stable when things get south.
Nevertheless, relationships also matter in all these things. When the hustle ends, what remains are the people you have in your life which in this case are your family and close friends. So, while you pursue your retirement dreams, do not fail to build bridges that you may need to walk back on in your later years. The friends who check on you and the people that make you smile, keep the connection strong. A healthy heart and a calm mind are worth more than money you may have in the bank.
Keep in mind that retirement isn't about age, or no longer working anymore, it's about having the freedom to live life your way. It is about having more options than obligations.
I think these suggestions are good enough for any serious minded person to use in building up a reliable retirement plan.
The image used is from Gemini AI image generator.
Posted Using INLEO