Category: Saving & Investing

Does the title here sound a bit odd to you? I mean, what do we have in common with squirrels? You see them all the time around here in spring and summer but almost never at this time of the year. They’re off keeping warm and relaxing, getting ready for spring I guess. And that’s my point here.

There isn’t much squirrel activity now that winter has truly set in. Over the last several months, like just about every squirrel, the ones in my neighborhood got ready for the long winter ahead. This past week we just had a 20+ inch snowstorm and a well prepared squirrel can pretty much feel good if he did what we was supposed to do.

Now that I am well into the retirement mode—having actually retired back in 2013 and started collecting my Social Security—it is way easier to look back and see what I did in planning and executing my journey. 2013 may seem like eons ago, but in reality it’s just a flash in my mind and that’s the way time seems to go for all of us. One day you’re 35 and retirement seems like it will never get here and in a flash you’re 60-something and you need to have all your ducks lined up and a real retirement plan in place. That’s where the little reminder I came up with comes into play: P.R.O.T.E.C.T yourself, or Plan Retirement Options To Ensure Cash Tranche.

P is for Plan

When the word “plan” comes up in any conversation, it requires that you do something. You means you and not someone else who may have a plan and you just may be a part of the fringe of that. For example, when it comes to your future and retirement, if your family has built wealth and you are planning to inherit some of it to fund your expenses and even your retirement…don’t count on it. While that may qualify technically as a plan, it is a terrible one!

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We all hope and aspire to be able to save and grow our money. It’s not just a good idea. It may be fun to do and a challenge, but it is very important to save money for the future, target “numero uno”: retirement! But right now, even trying to find a high-interest savings account online has become practically impossible and if you do find any, you can’t earn enough interest to keep up with inflation. That’s where investing comes in. You may have put off investing because you didn’t have much in the way of finances, but I’m here to tell you to how to start investing without a lot of money.

Investing Your Money Has Become a Real “Go To” Plan

You may think that investing is only for wealthy people. Or that you just don’t even know the most fundamental thing about investing and are simply frightened at the thought of it. Or you may have just put off investing forever. If you did that because you didn’t have much money left over for investing, then I have very good news for you. It doesn’t take much money to get started with investing!

It’s the height of summer here in New Jersey and since we aren’t dining out like we do normally this year, it’s a perfect time to fire up the grill and do some real barbecuing, isn’t it? Hopefully you can do that and well, as strange as it may seem, I find that barbecuing is a lot like investing basics! What?

Yes, you read that right. Before you write me off as crazy, follow along and I’ll explain how a good basic investing strategy is like cooking good barbecue (with the disclaimer that I’m neither a barbecue nor an investment expert). Many people don’t know a lot about investing, and so they’re afraid to start. This can have a significant impact on your retirement savings and the growth of your wealth. Learning the basics of investing isn’t that difficult, and in fact, it really is a lot like cooking barbecue!

The closer you get to your retirement, the fewer risks you should be taking with your money and investments. That’s just good common sense, because you can’t find yourself after you stop working “losing” value in your nest egg or you will be in for real trouble. But it isn’t as easy as it sounds, because while you are looking for something that’s really “safe” and carry at most minimal risk, you are also looking for something with some kind of growth so you can keep ahead of inflation at the very least. So how do you find safe investments when you are in the retirement mindset?

Diversify Your Investments

The best investment advice for anyone, retiree or not quite there yet, is to diversify. That’s because it is a way to avoid putting all of your eggs into just one basket and gives you a hedge or safety net on exactly what happens in a typical market cycle.