Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Fend For Yourself

The first thing I want to address is why you should not rely on the government to take care of you when you retire.

For most people they've heard relatively the same thing they're whole lives. Which is, study hard, get a degree, and get a good job with benefits and eventually retire and draw out your Social Security.

People have this mentality that the government should solve all their financial problems and take care of them. They feel that after working for years, that they're entitled to some money from the government. I'm here to tell you, that's not a safe bet.

Social Security, more than likely will not be there by the time Generation X retires. Let's look at why.

Baby boomers are getting ready to start retiring. This is about 75-80 million people, ready to retire. Let's say they each receive only $1,000 per month. That's $75B-$80B each month! Those B's stand for billion by the way. That's the equivalent to 1 Hurricane Katrina or 1 Iraq War each month! At this rate, how long do you think it will take for Social Security to go bankrupt?

So what can you do about this dilemma? The first thing you can do is to educate yourself financially. This is another problem with the public school systems today. They educate you to be an employee and not give you any REAL financial advice. Second, you need to determine what you truly desire. Do you want to be rich in the next couple years, do you want to retire rich.

Don't expect anyone to take care of you. You need to learn to take care of yourself. If everyone did that, this country would start to get rid of their debt, our economy would rise and everything would be honky dory. I'll get into different ways of building you wealth in later posts.

Financial Teaching

For a while, I've studied finance and have been expanding my financial iq.

In the book, Why We Want You To Be Rich, by Donald Trump and Robert Kiyosaki, Robert explains the "Cone of Learning." Which is how people tend to remember things after 2 weeks.

After 2 weeks, people tend to remember 90% of what we say and do. 70% of what we say, 50% of what we hear and see, 30% of what we see, 20% of what we hear, and 10% of what we read.

I decided that I want to help not only myself but others in learning about finance, money, and real estate. Therefore, I have decided to share what I know and learn here.

By making the conscious effort to remember what I've learned and write about it, it increases how well I'll hold on to what I've learned.

I encourage the readers of this blog to put in their input, ask questions, and just overall participate in these teachings. If you have something you would like my input on or learn about, send me a message and I'll be happy to share what I know about the subject.