WHERE DO YOU WANT YOUR MONEY TO TAKE YOU TODAY in Software

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doesn t sound too bad, but what if you could get compound interest at 10 percent Sounds much better doesn t it Especially if you consider that increasing the interest rate by 4 percent could mean doubling or tripling your money For example, the difference between investing $1 at 5 percent and investing $1 at 10 percent for 30 years is $1313 ($17449 $4322) This assumes that everyone can handle higher-risk investments, when the truth is that there are some people who cannot tolerate the risk involved with certain investments If you find that you really can t sleep at night because you are worried about your money, then you do need to have it invested more conservatively However, your choice then becomes putting it in something like a bank CD (which is also insured up to $100,000 per investor) or a savings account Obviously, since both investments are very low risk, you will need to put your money in the bank CD because it yields a higher interest rate than the savings account would Also, since you will be utilizing lower-paying investments, you will need to invest more than you would otherwise Therefore, if you were going to invest $1500 per year in higher-risk investments, you ll need to invest more than that, say $3000, simply because the money is going into lower-paying investments All things considered, try to invest as much as possible in an investment vehicle that has the highest potential return that you are comfortable with And, while it s never too late to start, if you haven t yet begun to save for your retirement, do it now! The earlier you begin, the more money you will be able to amass before you retire You may also find that you ll be able to retire sooner than you had anticipated

Once you have set your goals and you have started to form a clear picture of what you would like to do during your retirement, you need to figure out how much money you will need to live on If only that was all there was! Unfortunately, our economy isn t static, and will be subject to many fluctuations between now and when you begin your retirement That means that not only do we not know how

the stock markets will perform, but we also don t know what kind of inflation we will face over the next few years It could be that inflation is rather stagnant, or we could see a period of high inflation Regardless, you need to make sure that you are prepared for your retirement Although the future is characterized by so much uncertainty, that s no excuse for putting off retirement planning There are a couple of ways to estimate your needs The first is a more expense-driven method, while the second is a needs-and-wants method The expense-driven method asks you to estimate the percentage of your current expenses that you will have during retirement When I use this method for retirement planning, I generally say that the expense percentage will not change; I use 100 percent My reasoning is that although some expenses will go away, others will replace them In fact, you may find that you are spending more in retirement than you did while you were working For example, Jeff and Mary Client are concerned about their retirement They want to approach their planning from an expense point of view They have itemized all their current expenses (on a monthly basis) and find that they are spending $72,000 per year That includes helping their son with his college tuition, roughly $4000 per year They also contribute to an IRA for both of them, $6000 at current limits They would like to retire in 10 years At that time, they won t be spending the $4000 for their son s tuition, nor will they be putting $6000 into IRAs for both of them Their expenses will drop by at least $10,000 per year However, Jeff and Mary have said they would like to start traveling at that time because they haven t had much time to do any traveling yet They would like to take at least two trips per year and are excited about traveling abroad Jeff estimates that their other expenses will remain the same Their house is already paid off, as are their cars Their main expenses are all discretionary, which they think will remain about the same, but may increase since they will have more time So, although their expenses will appear to drop by $10,000, they will probably increase, especially once inflation is considered Therefore, Jeff and Mary think that spending $72,000 per year during retirement will be an accurate figure For some people, though, estimating the percentage of their current expenses will not yield an accurate analysis That s where the