You Can Get Closer to Your Retirement Dream…

Starting Right Now

Source: Automatic Wealth by Michael Masterson

If you fall for the Million-Dollar Lie and convince yourself that you can save yourself into a comfortable retirement, you will wake up one day feeling like you can’t stand to work another day – but when you look at your retirement account, you’ll realize you will probably have to keep working for the rest of your life.

If you take my advice seriously, face the future realistically, develop wealth-building habits, get your income up there, and begin to develop equity, you will be able to retire in 7 to 15 years – and that will be early, believe me, compared to most of the rest of the retirement age population.

But since even seven years may seem too long to wait, I suggest the following nine-point strategy for getting close to retirement much sooner.

1. Start a side business as soon as possible .If you select a subject area that you care about, you won’t mind the work.  In fact, the work will feel good and rewarding - like a hobby.  It will relax you.  It will amuse you.  It will challenge you.  And it may enrich you.

2. Buy at least one rental property. This will give you a feeling of security, because you’ll own something substantial – something with a value that is easy to determine, something with a value that can not be erased by an Internet malfunction, something that can not be stolen form you, lost, and so on.  It may also turn you on to a very effective way to build your net worth on a leveraged basis (using bank loans) that could, if you get even a reasonable amount of appreciation on your investments, make you wealthy.  

3. Consider buying a second home in a tropical paradise.  This is not a good idea for everyone.  But if you’ve always dreamed of owning a second home on the beach or in the mountains and you’d “like to live like a king”.

4. Relocate to a retirement location early.  If you are dreaming of retiring to the Sun Belt or the mountains but feel that you have to wit until you are 65 to do so, think again.  You could live in sunny South Florida and still make good money. 

5. Don’t work when you are not working.  This is something you can do right away.  Once made, this change will make you a more entertaining person, lighten up your evenings, and make your weekends feel a little like retirement.

6. Care about what you do. You can make your work feel a lot more like retirement passion or hobby by simply caring more about what you do.  That means finding a good useful purpose in it.

7. Interrupt your schedule with regular mini-vacations.  You can get more fun and energy in your working life by breaking up the year with mini-vacations. You don’t need much time to get away.  A three-day weekend is more than enough.  The trick, again, is to find something to do that has means something to you.

8. Live rich now.  You don’t need to be a billionaire to live like one.  Most of the luxuries that wealth affords are within reach of anyone who makes a decent living.  Never buy impulsively.  Understand what you are buying.  Remember that most purchases make you poorer, not richer… so make every purchase count.

9. Be proud of yourself.  You don’t have to wait until you are rich and retired to be proud of what you have accomplished on your way to financial independence.  Wealth is a very relative thing.  The moment you have more than you owe, you are becoming wealthy – and so long as you earn more than you spend, you are building more wealth.

These are your first goals: Earn more than you spend and have more than you owe.  When you have achieved those goals, you will have taken the most important step toward turning yourself into an automatic wealth builder.