How To Retire….NOT!

A simple visit to any retirement class will reveal the destruction of the small gains simple folks have made in trying to put together a retirement for themselves. The elimination of property appreciation from the American homeowners landscape took with it the hopes of most folks to retire any time soon. The percentages show us that most retired folks are trying to live on social security alone. Add to that the prediction of the steady demise of social security payments in the 2030’s and 2040’s, and the longer length of the average lifetime, and you’ve got quite a perfect storm coming for the American elderly.

The small gains and miserly options allowed by our government legislation for the personal savings of the average American to build a retirement are hopelessly inadequate. IRA’s and matching retirement plans are allowed on small sums of under ten thousand dollars while the cost to retire is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. The goofball economics of nest eggs growing six, ten, or twelve percent a year are totally inverted, and for most folks their money is earning almost nothing or they lose money every year in the stock market vehicles they blindly try and fail to make work. It is just as though Las Vegas or Atlantic City were suggested as viable ways to grow your portfolio for retirement. We all know the outcome of either using Vegas or the stock market…the house wins!

Mostly in life, and if you are lucky, you will have a few good years of earnings and the rest of the working years of your life you will just be getting by. The retirement caps on any plans to aid in retirement should be removed, and we should not have any caps on retirement tax free savings. So when you are making good money, you can pack it away for your retirement, and hopefully build enough of a nest egg to survive financially the eighty five years you probably will live. The American government legislation aimed at sucking up your every last taxable cent for today, rather than creating larger tax free savings opportunities for you so you might, just maybe, survive the future. After an individual is forty eight years old they should be allowed to put every penny of their paycheck, that they chose to and can afford, toward their retirement.

You have to play it very smart to win in the retirement game. You have to be a genius, and be very lucky, to win and have enough money at the end of your work life to retire. As long as we set it up that way, most of us dumb asses will be trying to live on social security and waiting for the sky to fall.

As a sales person working on commission you have to include retirement thinking as part of your every day, not only for yourself, but as part of your sales pitch. If you are in the mortgage business as a loan officer, getting loans from realtors on real estate listing from the MLS, the retirement discussion should be part of every loan application. (No matter how young the couple or individual) We know that half the folks don’t think about retirement at all so if you can speak to retirement potentials and tie the investment to a positive retirement opportunity it will help you close your customer and win you the origination! The other half of your customers are coming in already talking about fifteen year loans or mortgage vehicles that will let them pay off their house early! Turn the retirement conversation into a sales tool that you can use to help your customer and help yourself! Win…win!

Write Dr. Billy for some simple thoughts about the retirement conversation as a sales tool and let me know what you think!