Want to achieve FAME?

Add comment December 3rd, 2007

 Thomas A. Muldowney, MSFS, ChFC, CLU, CFP®, CRC, CMP®, AIF® 

There’s much ballyhoo about retirement and accumulation planning.   For most of us, the best way to acquire wealth is hard work, perhaps, very hard work.  It’s even better if the hard work was done by your ancestors.  For those of us that were not born into the lucky genetics club, the hard work is upon our shoulders. 

I recently read an article by Bob LeClair (Leimberg Information Services) who suggests that retirement is not automatic.  In fact, he suggests that for a large segment of the population, their retirement plans will be postponed “…until income or assets become reconciled with a shorter life expectancy.”   This is a poetic description of working longer – probably well into normal retirement years. 

This does not have to be the case.  The tools for retirement planning have not changed in 5,000 years and even more importantly, they have not been kept secret.     

Only three tools are available to build up your nest egg:  Time; Rate of Return and Money.   Simply put, if you have a lot of all three of these tools, you have a pretty good shot at a comfortable retirement.    

For some of you, this is your first exposé to accumulation planning and it is very simple.  I call it FAME…Financial Accumulation Made Easy; 

1. Save some money every single paycheck - this is the money part;

2. Start this program as soon as you get your first job   (If you can’t go back to your first job…start right now.)  - This is the time part;

3. Make your money work for you. - Investing provides the rate of return.  In each case, “more” is better!  

There is a huge difference between ‘man at work’ and ‘money at work.’  Money at work turns your dollars into a tireless miracle worker.  Invested money works 24/7, your investment wealth will work for you long after you have become too tired to toil. 

To gain your own FAME…start now, save a lot, and invest wisely.