Even You can Retire Rich

Last weekend I really did something great. You want to know what? I went to my neighbor's house and took his interview. Mr. Jackson is a retired person. He have 3 children, Mary, Samantha and Joe. He still have loads of responsibilities on his shoulders, but he is happy because he had already planned his retirement earlier.

He said, "I always some portion of my salary, always invested in appropriate places and always lived within the income boundaries." All thanks to my wife Susan who at the age of 48 started working once again and contributed equally to the family income. Mr. Jackson himself confessed that he never thought what will happen when he get retires? He also told me that he should have made well plans at the age of 50 only which he did not. He said though he did few things correctly, most of the things done were incorrect.


Mr. Jackson has shared all his feelings with me, whatever he did wrong all he has shared in his interview. He said,"I never allowed this feeling to come within me that one day I and Susan will retire and after that who will take care of the family, my son being very young to earn for entire family. I never kept records of my pensions, social securities and personal expenses.

Second big mistake i did was that, I never consulted any financial planner or retirement expert for my finances. I needed an investment strategy that could have helped me in knowing the income of my family. Thirdly, i always made false implications regarding the share market. I made huge investment in 1991 during the Gulf Crisis. The result was heavy losses.

I made a wrong choice in terms of provident fund and pension funds. I had two options, one was to take maximum payment with the pension funds and the other was to leave some amount of money to my wife after i m dead. I chose the 1st option but now i m regretting thinking what will happen if i passes away tomorrow only.

Then i really took a wrong decision in terms of my retirement, if i would have waited for more 6 months i would have got full pension funds because i was about to turn 65 after that. As per new rules of the Government if you are 65 or above 65 then you will get full pension funds. Last but not the least I never stopped from spending. It is not at all a good idea for the retired persons to live on credit card debts.
With all these silly mistakes there are two things on which i feel proud of myself. First I joined a tax-friendly plan which helped me and Susan to grow our money. Secondly I created a gateway of exit for my family. It means that I hired a legal lawyer and asked him to prepare a will and the power of attorneys. I organized everything on time like marriage certificates, property deeds etc so they would be available whenever needed by our children in future.