Step Three: You, The Business of Retirement
Step Three: You, The Business of Retirement
This section breaks down the business of you. Like every business, we will develop a plan that includes all of the assets and liabilities influencing your success. We will discuss taxes and economic pressures (such as inflation), the role of your home and your job, and the ’self-centered-ness’ you will need to achieve what we are trying to do.
The True Face of Capitalism (Book excerpt) At some moment in the next second or so, an entrepreneur emerges from his/her garage with the next best idea, the business that will carry forward the true face of capitalism in the United States. The recent economic downturn may have pushed this process along even further, turning desperation into a deep search for what we think we might be if we had the time. Preorder the book Target2025.
Research (Book excerpt) We have the goal: 2025. This is, in a word, the executive summary. The Small Business Administration calls this the most important thing a business can do: state what it is and what it wants to do. You want to take all of the elements of what you may have, assuming of course that you have some investments, even if they are scattered around at various previous employers, and compile a profile of each. This would be the market summary, a map of the landscape you have navigated so far. Preorder the book Target2025.
Outlining the Plan for your Retirement/Business (Book excerpt) Plans are not designed to be filled with hopes and dreams. The best of them are built around the possibility of disaster. They essentially answer the ‘what if’ question in advance of the ‘what now’ one that often gets asked after the fact. Preorder the book Target2025.
The Confidence Dilemma (Book excerpt) Professor Stallings, despite his gift, his achievements and the confidence that his mind could solve one of the most difficult mathematical challenges ever posed, was human. Just like us. He understood his biggest mistake was not in the calculation, but in the lack of humility surrounding the error he made. Preorder the book Target2025.
The Dream of If (Book excerpt) No matter how many times you have been told to be diverse in your investments, you are not. Once again, we ask ourselves and are haunted by “if”. Preorder the book Target2025.
From the Aftermath (Book excerpt) Of all of the advice that anyone could give you, one piece holds more strength than any. How you structure your retirement portfolio is your business. If you never want to admit you are wrong, never want to second-guess your logic no matter how irrational, never want to rebalance or reallocate, that’s okay. Your business will fail. The shear arrogance of rigidity will cripple you. Preorder the book Target2025.
Clearly Close (Book excerpt) If you were given three choices: pay the bills, begin saving for retirement, or rework our everyday finances so we could save more today, we all tend to take calculate our odds incorrectly and fail to make the right choice. Preorder the book Target2025.
Making the Right Choices (Book excerpt) The less debt you enter retirement with is perhaps a better determination of how much money you will need to survive this important game of strategy. It is not how much you need to retire; it is what will you need it for. Preorder the book Target2025.
The Assessment (Book excerpt) It is one thing to say you want to retire, and long the same lines of your retirement as a business, it is wholly another to actually do so. Once the business plan has been written, assessing who you are, which was begun in the previous steps on investor behavior and risk, ranks as number two on the list of important business plan objectives. Preorder the book Target2025.
Location, Location, Location (Book excerpt) As with all information, it is past history. As with all information received, it is what you bring to it. You wouldn’t erect a building for your business in the middle of the desert unless of course you were renting all-terrain vehicles to explore the vast wasteland. The same logic applies to how you will construct your retirement plan. Where you begin is surprisingly not that important. What is important is that you begin soon. Preorder the book Target2025.
Financing (Book excerpt) Your retirement plans, no matter what they are, have some grounding in the tax code. There are contribution limits that few of us ever reach. There are pre-tax contribution opportunities that many of us miss. And it is from those two tax-advantaged bumps that we can find the financing needed to run our retirement business. Preorder the book Target2025.
Previous Books by Paul Petillo
Hardcopy: Mutual Funds for the Utterly Confused (McGraw-Hill, 2008), Retirement Planning for the Utterly Confused (McGraw-Hill. 2007), Investing for the Utterly Confused (McGraw-Hill, 2006), Building Wealth in a Paycheck-to-Paycheck World (McGraw-Hill, 2004)
eBook: Mutual Funds for the Utterly Confused (McGraw-Hill, 2008), Retirement Planning for the Utterly Confused (McGraw-Hill, 2007), Investing for the Utterly Confused (McGraw-Hill, 2006), Building Wealth in a Paycheck-to-Paycheck World (McGraw-Hill, 2004)
