On the Green Page

Today I cross-posted this on the green page:

News from the "Real World": Become a millionaire: Start saving in your youth: "The Best Article Every day: 'The turbulent 20s, that sometimes pleasurable, often painful transition from carefree adolescence to responsible adulthood, is admittedly a difficult time for anyone to focus on saving for retirement.'"

Then I added this as my own comment:

So this may seem a little of topic, but I had to post it. There's this meeting everyone in their 30's attends. You either go to see someone on your own about an IRA or you have a session at work about a 401k. At this meeting they show you a chart about the growth of retirement savings.

Basically what the chart shows is that starting to save at 30, no matter how much you put away, you can't possibly get as much money as you would have had you started contributing at 20 and then stopped at 30 and never contributed again!

Put some money away early.

I've had that particular presentation maybe three times. It's maybe one of the most demoralizing occurrences of adult life. One of the people doing the presentation even had a name for that part of the talk, something like "the death chart" because it was so depressing.

Part of me thinks it ought to be a law that if you work before the age of 21 that a full 50% of your earnings should go into an unbreakable personal retirement trust. You'd think it was really beat while trying to get gas money for dates, but you'd be kissing your representatives when it came time for that IRA presentation. I thought about this the other day too when people were talking about Clinton's proposal of $5,000 for every newborn child. If they put that check into an unbreakable retirement account maybe it isn't as odd an idea as it sounds.

So, for readers here I have the same advice as I gave my students (or at least those that read that post): Put some money away early. You'll thank yourself later.