The following is a guest post brought to you by one of our partners.
Don’t Forget About Your Future
Life is hard isn’t it? It seems like the older I get, the more I wish I was a child again. There are absolutely no responsibilities and everything is a game. Once you graduate from college, you need to find a job, and then you might get married and have children. Suddenly, your list of responsibilities shoots through the roof!
House payment, car payment, heat, food, electricity, trash pickup, clothing, home repairs; there are so many things to consider once you get older, and often times one important aspect gets overlooked: investments.
We all hope to retire at some point, but it often seems too far away to even think about today. My friend occasionally depends on me for financial advice and will soon have to make a decision where to put her work investments, since they are discontinuing their 401(k) program. In talking with her coworkers about where they were going to put their money, she discovered that many of them already have outside investment accounts that they will simply roll their funds into. She, unfortunately, does not.
Over the past 10 years, she has been working at her job and has basically invested the minimum amount. Over those years, she has saved up only $15,000. Since these investments weren’t necessarily on her radar, she just assumed she was doing fine. After all, at least she was doing something.
Start Investing More
If you work at a large corporation, it is likely that your investment contributions are matched up to a certain percentage. My advice to you is to deposit enough money each month to gain the full match, but don’t stop there. My friend is on her way to building a retirement account of $100,000, which if she’s lucky will last her 5 years. Don’t be like my friend.
I wouldn’t necessarily advise you to invest all of your money into your work account. Instead, find another agency to invest your money through. The best ones will not only allow you an avenue to make trades with ease, but also provide you seemingly limitless information about thousands of funds.
Many times, the best investment companies go even beyond that. Not only will they allow you to make trades and research various funds, but they also provide analyst opinions as well! Interactive Investor is one of these companies and would be an excellent resource for you to further your investments. Best of luck to you!