This couldn’t be any more truer of your retirement as it is during your working years. Relying on the government for your prosperity and retiring early are two of the quickest ways to poverty in your old age. Money doesn’t last forever unless your money is generating money on its own. One successful way of doing this is by owning dividend paying stocks that grow their dividends over time. Another way is by diversifying those investment over several economic sectors and not concentrating in only one area. Different sectors of the economy grow at different times and at different speeds so in order to ensure my success in retirement I need to have my investments represented by as many of those sectors as possible.
The only way the government can guarantee your retirement and your healthcare is by paying its bills or obligations. There’s only two ways for the government to do this and that’s to tax the personal income of its population or to continue to print more and more paper money. This means that the government will be either taking your money through taxation or devaluing your money through inflation. There’s no other way to pay theses obligations. If the government is unable to increase its ability to tax its population or they are restricted in their ability to print money, the only alternative left is to reduce its commitment in terms of retirement an healthcare. None of these choices are good and none of them are to your benefit.
I want to be as much in control of my own retirement as I can possibly be. That means I need to establish a retirement based upon investing in stocks that increase their dividends over time by simultaneously increasing their sales and earnings. My personal rough estimate is that I need $10K per year for my normal monthly bills, $10K per year for replacement items that break or wear out over time, $10K for pocket money to cover entertainment, $10K for the cost of replacing and servicing two vehicles and property taxes, and $10K for income taxes. That’s a total of $50K just to break even each year. I’d like to have more just for a cushion but this is the absolute minimum I would need to retire. Other individuals would obviously need more, especially if housing costs are included.
Seems scary, right? Seems like a lot too, but if I really want to maintain my standard of living well into retirement and not resort to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches every day then I’ll need this level of income for years to come. Factor in inflation over a twenty year retirement and the numbers only get higher.
Once you start to think about these things the realization of setting up a self directed retirement system becomes apparent. Luckily there’s plenty of ways to do this through Brokerage Accounts and IRAs, but these accounts need time to be effective. They need years. They need to compound over time to become effective. I’ve learned over the years that an excellent plan for this is dividend growth stocks and I’ve also found that the best place to start looking for these investments is the list of Dividend Aristocrats.
Nothing, not even the list of Dividend Aristocrats, is an absolute sure thing. That’s why I don’t blindly buy these stocks without doing due diligence. I highly recommend that you do the same when researching any stock. I also highly recommend that you start early to allow your investments to grow over a lengthy time period.
Good Luck and Good Trading.