A former editor of mine at McGraw-Hill once told me that people love lists. Give them ten steps, five ways to succeed, six of this, seven of that, and you will have piqued their interest. He was right but only to the point where you have to factor in how people use those lists, those bullet points of things-to-do. We cross off what we feel we have done and largely ignore the things that we feel are beyond our control. That’s a dangerous thing to do when it comes to any form of successful retirement planning.
An old football coach of mine was said that potential simply meant: “ain’t done nothing yet!” He was right in that assessment. We all have the potential to do so much more with our retirement but have yet to make the necessary adjustments to do achieve what we are all capable of achieving.
The possibilities are quite another thing entirely. We have, for the most part, a good idea that we need to invest more, live more frugally – or at least within our means, and exercise all of the tools at our disposal. Folks who write about this stuff find themselves in an awkward position most of the time. Do we promise doom-and-gloom or do we paint the future as a sunny event we can all enjoy provided we do what we can now?
The possibilities we have control over – how much we invest, how much debt we manage, how much spending we justify, how well our health is, what sort of career we have chosen – are often pitted against the possibilities we have no control over – taxes, inflation, market volatility, health, insurances, and job interruptions.
So we list out the things we should do, the essentials: invest more with more risk than most of us take, live within our means, plan for the worst and hope for the best, hedge against taxes (by investing both inside a tax-deferred account and outside of those accounts in a Roth IRA), do what we can to stay healthy and keep a watchful eye on all of these accounts.
Winston Churchill once said that “Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential”. You can create all sorts of lists but you can never successfully cross anything off when it comes to retirement planning.
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