Hope for your financial life and beyond

Are You Ready to Live to 100?

September 9, 2013 by 24 Comments

100This coming February, 2014, our family will be gathering in central Indiana to celebrate a centenarian life. My grandfather will be turning 100 and I’m sure there will be a festive party at the retirement community where he lives. What makes this even more remarkable is that he will be the second member of his family to reach this age. His sister is still alive and kicking at 102.

Both are generally healthy for their age and maintain an active lifestyle (as much as possible for a 100-yr. old). My grandfather, a preacher all his life, still helps lead church services for the other retirees and is an active writer in his journals. His sister still enjoys playing pool in the rec-hall basement. They both tune in every day to watch the Chicago Cubs play and then rehash the game with one another.

While living to 100 is still not the norm, their longevity represents a growing trend in the U.S. and the rest of the world. People are staying healthier and living longer. In fact, the Population Division of the United Nations estimated in 2012 there were 316,000 centenarians worldwide, with the U.S., Japan and China leading the way with the most.

This becomes even more pronounced when it is compared to statistics from the 1930s, the decade Social Security Act was passed into law. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Retirement Tagged With: ,

2 HUGE Reasons We Need to Save to Build Wealth

February 26, 2013 by 24 Comments

build wealthIf you have been following my posts recently, I have been discussing why it is important to save money. I talked about saving for emergencies and then outlined saving for purchases and bills. These serve as a solid foundation for our financial health and to build wealth for the long-term.

They are foundational because we have to work through a lot of emotional baggage. We have to re-wire years of incorrect thinking about our saving habits. That’s not easy because we have to admit our mistakes. But once we have succeeded in changing our mindset about saving, we’ve conquered a giant obstacle. As I’ve said before most people aren’t thinking this way.

These saving concepts are foundational because they allow us to move on to the next phase of money management – to build wealth.

What Does It Mean to Build Wealth?

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Waiting Until Next Year Will Cost You Big Time (Part II)

October 19, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Many of us are born procrastinators. We love to put things off until the last possible minute. When that moment arrives, we go into manic mode in a desperate, final scramble as our backs are up against the deadline. This usually involves locking ourselves in a room away from the rest of humanity and a steady supply of coffee (or other caffeinated beverage) so we can forego our normal sleep patterns as we pound out the final details of our project.

If you are like me, you don’t like it when you procrastinate and you vow each time to NEVER let this happen again. Or you may try to fake yourself into believing that it doesn’t matter – like it is positive character trait – by saying “I work really well under pressure.” If I am honest with myself, I hate the tension and frustration that comes when I put myself in that predicament. It highlights my lack of discipline. It reminds me of all the time I wasted. It makes me realize the truth of the saying, “Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today.”

There is no hard and fast deadline when it comes to our personal finances. This project is very open ended as it lasts your entire lifetime. So procrastinators rejoice – you can delay dealing with your financial problems for years. But if you do, it will cost you greatly.

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Filed Under: Investing, Planning Tagged With: , ,