Even as the news told us with the turn of the calendar that the first Baby Boomer was eligible to retire, all of us wondered if they did. Were their retirement accounts so much better than ours? Did they make promises that they kept? Were they able to dance between the raindrops rather than simply weather the storm? We may never know more than we know about ourselves. But what do we know about ourselves and our retirement plans? Does the answer lie in how we approach our New Years resolutions?
By the time you read this, your New Year's resolutions may already be broken. If not, in the next couple of days they will be seriously tested. This doesn't make you a bad person - in part because you have broken them so often in the past. But there is a pattern in your lapses and if you promised yourself to build a better financial plan, focus more of your income on your retirement accounts, and/or simply spend less, breaking those commitments can have longer range effects that simply gaining a few pounds.
Why do we break the resolutions in the first place? In large part, our resolutions are well intended. But they tend to be an all-or nothing type of promise to not do better so much as to change course. This might relatively easy to do if you are 20 years old. But the older you get, the longer it will take for that ship you call life to readjust its headings.
Which brings us to the second reason we fail to follow through: lack of patience. As much as I hate to bring up the dieting analogy, it does apply to the way you treat your finances. Nothing is instant. You can't will away years of bad habits and as soon as one of those bad habits creeps into your diet, its over. In the world of finance, it might be a purchase done outside of your budget that has the ripple effect of bringing the resolution down.
Statistics have shown that resolutions morph from something that is a need-to-keep promise to one's self to a nice-to-keep promise. This is another reason why, by the end of the first week in January, you have back-burnered the promise to increase your 401(k) contribution, put your credit cards away, talk to your children about money, talk to your husband about the course of your retirement plan. Even if the idea was to build a plan, something anything more than what you have haphazardly pieced together, you have already lost some of the goals you set forth.
Men have no problem breaking resolutions if they make them at all. Women often see it breaking a resolution as a sign of some weakness. Both are wrong. Here are five easy steps to make your financial promises stick in the new year - and if you haven't made any, this will help you make some commitment without the pressure of a change in the calendar.
1. Be patient. No retirement plan was hatched in a day or a week or a year. Most 401(k) plans have internet access available to their plan participants. Log on and find out where you are in terms of contribution. If it is less than 5%, change it to 5%. This is usually the threshold where your pre-tax contribution has no effect on your take-home pay.
2. If you are a couple, do this together. One resolution to keep is that retirement plans are best used if they are combined. Not physically, but on a decision level. One plan might be better, the other might be more generous in the match. One of you might earn more where a 5% contribution is actually a larger dollar amount. One plan might have better investment opportunities. If don't approach this together, you will not get the benefit of two plans as one.
3. Add 1% a month every month thereafter until you reach the 12% mark. This will be not-as-painful but will require you readjust your spending habits.
4. Educate yourself about risk and how much you can embrace. Women have been studied and most of those surveys have drawn similar conclusions: women are more pragmatic when it comes to investments. If men and women looked at what they want and how their plan could help to achieve it, they might find themselves much better situated 15 years down the road than if they chased the next-hot investment cycle.
5. Take a look at your beneficiaries. Your investments and insurances need to be specific. Your will needs to be clear. And if you do this, you will find that this forces you to look deep into the future at a time when one of you - most likely, the woman, will still be around.
Paul Petillo is the managing editor of BlueCollarDollar.com and Target2025.com
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