Thinking About “Borrowing” Some of Your Retirement Money? Stop Now!

August 31st, 2010

The problem is that you will live to regret it
When I was young, healthy, working hard and pulling in the dough I never thought about retirement. I never had time for such a boring subject and it was so far away that it was totally irrelevant. Hey, who’s going to retire anyway?

Next time around
If those early years come around again I am going to make some changes. Retirement fund will move to the top of the list, even before the New Car Fund, the House Renovation Fund and the Overseas Travel Fund. It will be number 1 on the list where it should have been all the time.

The others
It is reported that most Americans have saved less than $50,000 for retirement and only about 11 percent have $250,000 or more saved. This is really bad news. Worse news is that even $250,000 is not going to give you a great retirement. If you invest that amount and hope to retire on the interest or income… you work it out.

And the rest
The extra-worse news is that thousands of workers are raiding their retirement-savings plans to pay their bills. Sure times are bad, jobs are scarce, interest is down and money is tight. The money you have stashed away in a 401(k) plan is sacred money. It is there for your retirement. If you use it now how will you live after you stop working?

Look at me
10 years ago when I was 67 years old, I was managing a small but select engineering company. We had lots of work consulting in the semi-conductor industry. We were working day and night and making good money, hiring engineers, buying cars for them, paying bonuses and having a great time. Then the semi-conductor industry hit a bump and our work stopped overnight. We began laying off men, selling the cars, closing down all sorts of money-gobbling facilities but in the end we had no choice, we closed. I found myself retired overnight.

My retirement fund
I called in my retirement fund, gulped when I saw the small monthly amounts I would be receiving and began scouting around for other work. And to my delight, I found it. It wasn’t what I was used to and the pay was terrible; I spent hours in my car instead of my air-conditioned office, my clients argued with me, delayed or simply never paid my bills. Our home lives changed, no more eating out, no new clothes and worst of all no new shoes for her… But here I was, retired, 67 and working.

It got better
I was happy. We adjusted our lives to our new circumstances, we managed a short holiday and slowly ‘change’ turned into ‘normal’. But I have to tell you that it’s a struggle. Had I put away for retirement as I should have, I would be living the life of Riley, cruise liners and all. Instead I get up every morning and go to work.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 31st, 2010 at 4:23 am and is filed under Employment, Finance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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