Author Topic: Terrible retirement advice  (Read 7113 times)

amicableskeptic

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Terrible retirement advice
« on: February 19, 2013, 10:20:30 AM »
My cousin just posted an article from dailyworth.com so I perused the site a little.  I got to this article and my jaw just dropped.  Here are their amazing retirement tips:

1. Buy Barrons. Every. Day
2. Pledging to save 1 percent more of your income than you did last year.
3. Decide to work a few years longer.

Number 2 isn't the worst idea, but when I read their example I just laughed.  "Let’s say that this past year you saved 4 percent of your $100,000 salary."  The next line should be "WTF are you spending all the rest of your income on, cut out 10-40K of wasted spending right now and become rich", but instead of that they say "save 5 percent of your income next year".  Sure that won't hurt, and sure it is a nice easy first step, but they don't go any further and they certainly don't mention drastically reducing your spending and they don't mention continuing to up your saving in future years.  No instead they mention that you could just keep working "not until you’re 96. How about 70?"

I guess everyone has to start somewhere, and maybe this article is good to get people moving, but I'm at the point where looking at saving 5% of 100K salary is just ridiculously laughable.

http://posts.dailyworth.com/posts/1497-save-1-more-to-make-a-fortune

Spork

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Re: Terrible retirement advice
« Reply #1 on: February 19, 2013, 10:27:36 AM »

I would say that "Let’s say that this past year you saved 4 percent of your $100,000 salary" equates to "I divert 4% of my salary to 401k and spend the rest."

In my world: this is absolutely common.  I've tried to talk to folks about savings rates in the double digits and they stare at me like lobsters are crawling out of my ears.  I am an idiot that doesn't understand how much it costs to <fill in the blank here>.

strider3700

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Re: Terrible retirement advice
« Reply #2 on: February 19, 2013, 10:48:11 AM »
I live  near an area where 70% of an average families gross income goes towards the mortgage.   That's effectively 100% of net going to the mortgage. Until just recently this was considered normal...  I I know almost noone with savings of any sort  and double digit savings rates are unheard of.  Even pushing my mustachian tendencies quite hard I'm barely breaking into the 20% savings rate realm.  That only requires 4 different jobs between myself and my wife. 

Left

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Re: Terrible retirement advice
« Reply #3 on: February 19, 2013, 10:51:33 AM »
I could see number 2 working for people that make a lot less than 100k... I don't even make half of that :(

But my savings rate is about 25-30%, give or take what I can :(

lauren_knows

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Re: Terrible retirement advice
« Reply #4 on: February 19, 2013, 11:22:41 AM »

1. Buy Barrons. Every. Day


I'm at a loss as to what this even means. Any help?

Left

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Re: Terrible retirement advice
« Reply #5 on: February 19, 2013, 11:43:09 AM »
I thought the barrons meant their magazine or something :D
http://online.barrons.com/home-page

lauren_knows

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Re: Terrible retirement advice
« Reply #6 on: February 19, 2013, 11:49:08 AM »
I thought the barrons meant their magazine or something :D
http://online.barrons.com/home-page

Huh, maybe.  So, just buying the magazine, in itself, is good retirement advice? Right.

NumberCruncher

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Re: Terrible retirement advice
« Reply #7 on: February 19, 2013, 01:52:21 PM »
I thought the barrons meant their magazine or something :D
http://online.barrons.com/home-page

Huh, maybe.  So, just buying the magazine, in itself, is good retirement advice? Right.

Buying it every day, no less! 

Yeah, that doesn't seem right. I have no idea what that means

strider3700

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Re: Terrible retirement advice
« Reply #8 on: February 19, 2013, 03:11:03 PM »
Barrons offers an online subscription service that you can purchase.  There they offer daily analysis of the markets.   $99/year  gets you the weekly magazine(digital only0 and the daily recaps as far as I can tell.   how this is good retirement advice I don't know

Crash87

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Re: Terrible retirement advice
« Reply #9 on: February 19, 2013, 04:47:18 PM »
1. Buy Barrons. Every. Day

I thought you were talking about the frozen pizza. I really hope nobody attempts that!

dragoncar

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Re: Terrible retirement advice
« Reply #10 on: February 19, 2013, 05:56:17 PM »
Wow, the cringe-worthy moment for me was:

Quote
a soul-satisfying $759,732

jdisc

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Re: Terrible retirement advice
« Reply #11 on: February 19, 2013, 06:31:52 PM »
Did anyone click on the link to the NY Times 1% More Calculator? The calculator maxes out the amount saved each year at 16%......

sheepstache

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Re: Terrible retirement advice
« Reply #12 on: February 20, 2013, 11:15:13 AM »
Barrons offers an online subscription service that you can purchase.  There they offer daily analysis of the markets.   $99/year  gets you the weekly magazine(digital only0 and the daily recaps as far as I can tell.   how this is good retirement advice I don't know

Well there goes my theory that a lifetime's worth of daily Barron's in the mail was supposed to be burnt to keep you warm in retirement.

grantmeaname

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Re: Terrible retirement advice
« Reply #13 on: February 20, 2013, 12:03:41 PM »
For $99 a year, it might be better to just burn dollar bills.

AccidentalMiser

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Re: Terrible retirement advice
« Reply #14 on: February 20, 2013, 02:14:27 PM »
1. Buy Barrons. Every. Day

I thought you were talking about the frozen pizza. I really hope nobody attempts that!

I'd rather buy frozen pizza every day than spend $99 per year on bad financial advice!

mpbaker22

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Re: Terrible retirement advice
« Reply #15 on: February 21, 2013, 11:35:53 AM »
I think increasing by 1% per month would be sound advice.  Still not enough to hurt, but you're increasing 12% every year.  Then stop after 3-7 years, and continue at the percentage you are at.