Welcome to All Visitors from getrichslowly.org
By G.E. Miller • Apr 2nd, 2008 • Category: Guest Posts
photo credit: Crossing Sparks
A welcome goes out to all visitors from J.D. Roth’s Get Rich Slowly blog. J.D. was one of the pioneers in the personal finance blog niche. The guest post I wrote is titled ‘The Compound Return Marathon: Which Retirement Strategy will Win?”. Please slide over to J.D.’s site to give it a read.
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Hey G.E.,
Great post over at Get Rich Slowly. At first I sort of groaned that someone was going to rehash the importance of investing early, but I liked the comparison of 20 years of stock investing vs. 48 years of CD’s… great illustration of the importance of taking on a bit of risk!
My fellow 20-something colleague always gloated about his stable asset fund in our 401k never dropping on down market days. He was totally happy earning a safe 3% for a retirement over 40 years away (I hope he’ll be able to afford it by then!)
Hey J.C. - thanks for the compliment. Yeah at 3% return your colleague is basically going to lose value on his money when you figure in inflation and taxes. There are tax free municipal bond funds that yield over 4% per year out there, he’d be better off going that route. But the bottom line is if the guy is in his 20’s, he’s got a whole lot of years ahead of him and should take on more risk. Try to explain that to him, but if that doesn’t work, just start calling him ‘old man with a shrinking egg’.
Hey G.E. - I’m a reader of Get Rich Slowly and am very glad to see a site dedicated to the younger savers - I love the advice at GRS, but so much of it doesn’t really apply to my situation. I’ll be watching this site anxiously for new stuff, now that I’ve found it!
Stephanie - that’s great to hear. It does seem to be a niche that is somewhat under-served. Looking forward to interacting with you further, and I hope you find the content valuable. Are there any areas in particular that you’re interested in hearing more about?
Honestly, that’s part of the problem - I don’t know! I mean, I don’t plan on getting married or having children anytime in the near future, so I’m not worried about shared finances or funding college educations or planning a family. I’m not sure if I ever want to be a homeowner, and even if I decide to it won’t be any time soon, because I want to travel while I’m young and have the freedom and energy to do so. I feel like I live a pretty balanced life in terms of enjoying myself now vs. planning for the future, but I’m not really sure what I should be focusing on! I put some money each month into a Roth IRA and a 403(b), and I’ve been working on an emergency fund. Right now I work at a residential high school, and living on campus (”free” rent, utilities, internet, etc.) is part of my job. So even though I only make a little over $20k/year right now, very little of that money has to go toward bills. So I think I have about the same amount of money to put toward investments and savings that most people making twice (or more) what I make would. However, since I have no clue where I’ll be in even 5 years, I don’t really know what to be doing /besides/ my monthly contributions. I really want to be more involved than just putting a portion of my money into those accounts every month, but I’m not sure what I should be doing beyond that.