Two weeks ago, General Electric (NYSE: GE) announced that they are freezing the pensions of 20,000 retirees.
The thought of finding out, in the midst of your retirement, that your penchant will be frozen is nothing short of horrifying. Unfortunately, for 20,000 retired GE employees, it’s a reality.
General Electric is a conglomerate that’s been around for over 100 years. At one point it was the most valuable company in the world, with a market value of $480 billion.
It is now worth $72 billion. It’s still a large company, but a far cry from its glory days.
Although it is very sad that many GE shareholders are in this position, there’s a lesson to be learned here: there is no such thing as a guarantee, even when it comes to pensions.
The only guarantee you have is the one that you create for yourself.
That’s why I’m such a big advocate for investing in the stock market.
If you work for the city, state or federal government, then your pension is pretty safe; however, I still recommend that you save and invest as if you don’t have a pension.
The worst thing that could happen is that you end up with a lot more money than you would have had otherwise.
My book, The Stock Market is For Everyone, is a short guide for the beginning, inexperienced investor that is easy to understand and can be put into action immediately.
Click the image of the book at left to be taken to its Amazon page. (Disclosure: As a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, I earn a small commission on each sale generated through these links.)
Hello, all. Today I’m turning the blog over to Chris Pascale. Chris is an author, accountant and adjunct professor from Long Island. He is the former CFO of Portfolios with Purpose, and is a current member of the IRS’ Office of the Chief Counsel.
Do You Want to Be Poor When You’re Old?
In sales, people are taught to get people to yes. The idea is that if you get them to say yes a bunch of times, they’ll agree to buy from you. For example, if you become a stock broker, you might say ‘would you agree that people have gotten rich with stocks?’ They would. ‘Would you like to own a portfolio of stocks?’ Of course.
The thing about this is that it’s nothing more than a 10-cent sales trick taught to morons who don’t know how to relate to others. Having been one, I know.
Like a lot of people who wanted to be in business, I joined AmWay when I was 18. And like many young people, I gained a lot of lessons the hard way. At the age of 33, I was the national sales manager for a $10,000,000 company, landing accounts like Wal-mart and Amazon. I regularly gave presentations to groups of salespeople as large as 100, but during my 15 years of sometimes being in sales, I spent a lot of time being very bad at it, studying techniques like the idiotic “getting them in a yes state,” as well as the very creepy mirroring technique where you cross your arms if they cross their arms; you put your hand to your chin if their hand goes to their chin. The idea is that if you mirror them, they feel you are the same, and will like you. The reality is that it’s very weird if they don’t know what you’re doing, and cheap and sleazy if they do.
Having run the gamut with sales approaches, I found some success by just being honest and upfront, and by keeping meetings short by making them say whether or not they wanted what I had. Nowadays, I don’t sell anything, but in the classroom, I do pitch ideas – particularly the idea of saving for the future. When doing so, I don’t tout the virtues of saving, or the gains they could make; I simply say “Do you want to be poor when you’re old?”
The answer is the opposite of Yes. And several students each semester get Roth IRAs or sign up to have their company sponsored retirement plans started.
You’re not in my classroom, but we can still explore how not to be poor when you’re old.
Can You Save Your Way to Comfort?
The wisdom of saving is get some money, and then keep a portion of it. But how much? It honestly depends on how much you live on, and how quickly you want to be free from needing to work. You may still work, but not because you need money.
The following table explains how much time it takes to buy your freedom by saving for the future based on percentage of savings.
How Much You Live on
Savings Rate
Years of Work : Years of Freedom
90%
10%
9:1
80%
20%
5:1
67%
33%
2:1
50%
50%
1:1
If you live on 90% of your income, you’ll obtain 1 year of freedom after 9 years of working/saving. If you live on 50% of your income, then every year worked leads to a year of being free.
The problem is that if you just save cash, you cannot buy long-term freedom.
Inflation Will Eat Your Equity
Money isn’t worth as much as it used to be. My parents’ first home was purchased in 1975 for $41,500. That home today costs about 6x that amount. During that same year, a gallon of gas was $0.57 and a postage stamp was a dime.
In the past 44 years it seems like a lot of very necessary items have gone up by a factor of 5. This means that having saved $200,000 in 1975 would have made you comfortable with admirable wealth, just like having $1,000,000 would today.
Taking this into account, even saving $1,000,000 is not enough if it’s just in the bank.
You have to buy assets like stock. This is where you plant your capital so that it can become wealth that will grow. Cash is static in the short-term, which is normal since it’s the medium of exchange, but the assets it buys can go up in value, partially because cash goes down in value.
What Assets to Buy so You’re Not Poor When You’re Old
Keep it simple. If you want to buy a home (not everyone does), buy a home you can afford without trouble. But also invest in the stock market.
How to Buy a Home: A popular saying is that “your home is your biggest asset.” For many, it will be true. Having the value a home brings can make one’s retirement years much easier. However, if your home is your biggest asset that means you have nearly no real cash to draw from, and it’s possibly because you were trying to keep up with the Joneses.
And that is something you must do. You need to buy a home that won’t make you stretch to make the payment. The rule of thumb is often that your payment should be 25% or less of your take home pay. This means that if you take home $4,000/month, you should not have a payment of more than $1,000. Where I live, that won’t get you much, so if you have an average income, you must consider where you can live well, or how you can make more money. You can also engage in a strategy called House Hacking.
By having a giant mortgage payment (or high rent that prevents you from saving for a home), you will not be able to build wealth. Not only will you be constantly stretched, but you’ll miss out on the better things in life, like simply relaxing.
Also, if you spend too much on a home, you won’t be able to buy any stocks, which is crucial for building wealth.
How to Buy Stocks: First, if you have a company matching program, like I do with my job in the federal government, you must take part in it. Your contributions will bring guaranteed 100% gains. If you do not have a company match, you should consider getting a job that offers this benefit because even if the fund underperforms, you’re going to do well. In fact, if it cuts in half, you still have your original amount.
Outside of that there are multiple ways to go, between Vanguard, Edward Jones, or even seeing how Wealthy Joe’s Eric Milton does by picking high-quality companies that he’ll research on your behalf.
If you wish to go on your own as an investing hobbyist, please note the following: (1) I do this personally, and greatly enjoy it, (2) Keep this account relatively small. If you put $100 into the retirement account, put $50 into this one. And (3) Read about the subject.
Regarding No. 3, I obviously recommend Eric’s book. But there are other good ones out there, too, like The Simple Path to Wealth, Your Money: The Missing Manual, and another terrific title is The Millionaire Next Door, which outlines how the average American millionaire lives, including how they buy homes, cars, etc.
For those unsure of whether to start investing because of the risk, consider the alternative.
Is Investing Risky?
Historically, not investing is much more risky.
Homes: My dad was a college graduate, and the average graduate in 1975 earned about $12,000 per year. My parents’ first home was about 3.5x that amount. Today, the average salary is around $50,000, and that same home costs 5x that.
A house can fall in value, but if you buy well and don’t get trapped in high monthly payments, you can pay it off and keep all the money if you sell it later. If you never sell it, then it will be a wonderful gift to your heirs.
Stock: The Gap used to be a penny stock. Does that mean you should invest in penny stocks? No, but what it does mean is that high-quality businesses with good leadership will grow. Some readers might be thinking about failing businesses that were once on top, like Sears and JC Penney’s, and they are good examples of companies that failed to stay strong as the market changed. After all, Wal-mart is still doing very well, particularly because they have a great website that provides good service.
The stock market, overall, has done very well. Knowing this, you should be investing in the market. The alternative is not to invest, which means you’ll have nothing.
Do not be so afraid at the chance of losing something that you, instead, guarantee it.
Gold: I don’t invest in precious metals. But if you look at the chart you’ll see that the year I was born (1982) gold was $447 an ounce. For the next 23 years it was mostly down or flat. Had you kept buying gold during that time, you’d have eventually done well, tripling your money as I write this, but had you invested in Ford Motor Co., you could have bought shares for about $1.00 in 1982, and could have cashed out at 20x your investment in under 20 years while getting quarterly dividends. Had you bought a piece of property you would have also done very well.
Keeping Dollars Only: If you want to stay “safe” and just save your dollars away, you will be better off than those who do nothing, but worse off for all your hard work.
You must put something away for later. At some point you either won’t want to work, or won’t be able to. If you have nothing saved/invested, you will be poor.
Social Security will not pay enough, nor is it supposed to. After all, only 6.2% of each paycheck goes to the program, and it can pay you from age 62-162, so in order to survive, it becomes a cheap system that keeps getting cut.
Adding insult to injury, being poor will hurt you in so many ways.
Why? Because they’re always thinking about money – how much they have, how much they need, and if they forgot about some other expense. I know that in times of economic hardship, I would check my online banking every morning to see which check was cashed. The combination of worry and stress likely made me forgetful or neglectful of other things.
Poor, Stupid & Gross
Let’s not forget that old people are gross! You’re going to be gross, no matter what, but you have a choice right now not to be poor and stupid. I suggest you take it.
Just enact this simple plan to prevent yourself from winding up this way:
Earn money
Put some money away
Buy a home you can afford, and then pay it off
The alternative is to do none of those things. You’ll have no savings when you need it, and won’t be able to have as much fun when you want, which will also make you boring.
My book, The Stock Market is For Everyone, is a short guide for the beginning, inexperienced investor that is easy to understand and can be put into action immediately.
Click the image of the book at left to be taken to its Amazon page. (Disclosure: As a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, I earn a small commission on each sale generated through these links.)
