Your Tell-All Guide to Saving for Retirement
Jason 0 Comments Retire Wealthy Retirement Planning Tips for Retiree's
I'm Britt, the co-founder of Dow Janes, and
every single week I have someone asked me how they can start saving for retirement
or how much they need or if it's too late to start saving. Today, I'm going to share my
top tips for starting to save for retirement. And don't worry; it's easier than you think.
If you want more ideas for saving, investing, and making the most of your money,
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All right. So, there are some misconceptions about retirement saving that I want to address.
First, one thing people often ask us is how much do I need for retirement? What's the magic number?
And the truth is it varies widely.
It depends on where you want to live or what lifestyle you
want to have or when you want to retire. Are you trying to retire at 40 or at 70?0.
If you take anything away from today, I want you to just start saving 20% of your pre-tax
income for your retirement, and you'll be fine. To learn more though, keep listening.
Okay. So how do you start saving for retirement? What you do is you follow the roadmap
steps. You make sure you're doing things in the right order. So we have a whole nother video
on the roadmap steps, but just to recap, the first thing you want to do is make sure
you're spending less than you make each month.
The second thing is to pay off any
high-interest rate debt you have, which is anything with an interest rate over 7%, then
you want to build up an emergency fund.
And then once you have those three things in place,
you're ready to start saving for retirement. So, to do that, you're going to find your monthly
savings number. You can use a simple retirement calculator to figure out how much you want to have
in retirement. I'll link to one in the description below. What you'll do is you'll add in your
current savings, anything you've already saved for retirement already, anything you expect to get
from social security, and then you'll adjust the savings amount to see exactly how much you need
to save each month to be on track, to meet your retirement goals. It's a super easy calculator,
you just enter the numbers. It'll spit out exactly what you need to do, and that number, that savings
amount, that's going to be your monthly goal.
So, if you don't already have an account,
you'll open up a retirement account, and that's where you'll begin to transfer that
savings amount to that account each month.
Where should you save your money? There are
different types of retirement accounts.
So, if your employer offers matching, then you'll
want to open a 401(k) or 403(b). In addition, you can open a Roth IRA or a traditional IRA.
IRA stands for Individual Retirement Account. If you're self-employed, you can also open a SEP
IRA. So for the Roth traditional or SEP IRAs, you can open those at any brokerage places
like Vanguard, Charles Schwab, Fidelity, or with a robo-advisor like Wealthfront or
Betterment. Any of those places offer retirement accounts. So, it's super easy to get started.
Then if your employer offers 401(k) matching, you definitely want to advantage of that.
So, what is 401(k) matching? It's when you save money for your retirement and your company
contributes the same amount that you save. They'll often match up to a certain amount
or a certain percentage of your salary.
So, if your company matches 4% of your
salary and you make $5,000 per month, you could contribute $200 per month towards your
retirement, and your company would contribute an additional $200 per month.
So you basically get
$200 in retirement money for free each month.
It's a way for companies to incentivize
their employees to save for retirement. So, if your employer offers this, definitely take
advantage of it. It's the easiest free money out there. And make sure you're contributing the
maximum amount that they're willing to match.
Okay. The next thing you'll do, if your employer
doesn't offer matching, or if you're, um, if you've already maxed that out, the next thing
you want to do is max out your contribution to your Roth or your traditional IRA. So, each year,
the IRS limits the amount that you're allowed to contribute. In 2021, the amount is $6,000.
If you're over 50, you have an extra bonus. You can contribute $7,000. So, try to contribute the
maximum amount to those accounts each year. So, max out your 401(k) to where your company matches
max out your Roth or your traditional IRA. If you're self-employed, you could also contribute to
your SEP IRA. If you're a great saver and you're saving more than those amounts, you can open
your own brokerage account.
So, a non-retirement account, and save the money there. You can use
that money for whatever you want, but you can know that you're saving that for retirement.
Once you've saved the money in those accounts, what you're going to do is invest that savings. So
for the easiest and simplest way to get invested, you'll invest in target date funds. These
are pre-made portfolios that allocate your money to a mix of stocks and bonds that
are appropriate based on your age.
If you want to invest in index funds yourself,
or if you're picking a fund that your employer offers, then you can use these rules of thumb.
Generally, you want your portfolio to be invested in the percentage of stocks that is equal to
120 minus your age.
So if you're 20 or younger, you want to have 100% of your portfolio
in stocks. If you're 30, you want 90% in stocks, for example. And just a quick
note that if you invest in target date funds, that will do that for you. The allocation
changes the allocation of stocks and bonds changes over time as you get older.
One quick thing to know is that you actually don't need to take your money, your
retirement money, out the year that you retire. You can leave it invested while you're in
retirement and just take out what you need, which means you actually have more time
than you think for your money to grow.
So, hopefully that gives you some peace of mind.
If you're getting started later in the game, if you're wondering how much you should be
saving in retirement savings each month, we have a couple of rules of thumb for you.
And
the bottom line is the sooner you start saving for retirement, the less you actually have to save,
because if you start sooner and you invest that money, it will grow and it will grow over a longer
period of time. If you're starting later in life, you have to save more because it has less
time to grow. So, if you're in your twenties, you can save 15% of your pre-tax income each
month and you'll be set. If you're starting in your thirties, you want to save 20% of your
pre-tax income. If you don't have anything saved and you're just starting to save for retirement in
your forties or your fifties, you'll need to save even more since you're starting later and your
money has less time to grow. If this is you, watch out for our next video on how to start saving
for retirement if you're in your fifties.
All right, the sooner you start saving for
retirement, the easier it is.
So, here's a recap of the steps: One, follow our wealth building
roadmap, so you know what to do in what order. Two, find your monthly savings. Number three, open
a retirement account. Four, take advantage of free money. Five, max out your contributions. Six,
invest your retirement savings, and seven, contribute to your retirement savings each
month. If you want to learn more about how to build your wealth and invest your retirement
savings, then definitely check out our webinar, Think Like an Investor. The link's in the comment
below.
All right. Thanks for watching..
Posted in Retire Wealthy, Retirement Planning, Tips for Retiree's