Retirement

People always say that it's "never too early" to put aside for retirement. Well, how about at age 23?

I've taken two steps in the last 6 months to ensure that I'll have enough money set aside for retirement, whenever that might be. I'm in no hurry to retire; I would find myself bored without something to do every day. Plus, right now I enjoy going to work, and couldn't imagine a time (right now) when I wouldn't have to work. But, I digress. (Sorry Kathy, I just thought it was appropriate.)

Around the first of this year I started making contributions to a work-sponsored retirement 401k account. The bank in charge, in cooperation with the company, takes a portion of the weekly pay check prior to taxes and invests it. The company gives an incentive to employees by matching 50 cents for every dollar invested, up to 3% of the weekly pay check. I elected to contribute 4% of my earnings every week, but of course that is supposed to increase the more money I earn. But for now, it's a fair percentage. I am investing back in the company and the bank, and in return I receive free money from the company and the interest it all earns in the market.

A couple weeks ago, I decided to open an IRA account through Discover Bank. I have had a Discover credit card since my first year of college, and it has been a very positive experience working with Discover. I wasn't really sure if I wanted to invest in an on-line bank; the idea of not having a brick-and-mortar building to go into was a little strange. But hey, you can do that with renting movies, and a lot of people get their prescriptions by mail order; how different is this? I wouldn't have just picked any old bank though; I picked Discover because I have been a customer of theirs for over 5 years, and have come to trust their practices. Not only that, but their rates are so much higher than any bank I had found around here, so that was a major bonus. Their IRAs are invested similarly to CD accounts, so I chose a 10-year ROTH IRA CD account. The 10-year CD had the highest interest rate, and since the money invested was taken out of my "don't touch this unless completely necessary" savings account, I figured I could do without that money for at least 10 years, if necessary.

A thought that kept occurring to me when I considered investing in retirement was that I didn't want to end up like one of those elderly people that still had to work. It's one thing to want to work at that age, but to rely completely on that income was a little scary for me. There is so much talk about Social Security not being around when I reach retirement age, and I have to admit that's a little bit scary. But, I choose to be proactive instead of reactive, and these two options I chose are my ways of doing so. I don't want this blog to turn political, but I know some of my readers choose to do so; I just hope that our lawmakers do something to fix the problems associated with Social Security to ensure that my generation and my parents' generation can still rely on that money. And that's as political as this post gets.

By the way, this is my 150th post on Blogger! I just wanted to send a most sincere Thank You to all the readers that I have gained in the last 5 years. Most of you are family and friends, some of whom I have never met or haven't seen in years. This is a great way to keep in touch and to let everyone know what's going on and what I'm thinking about. I hope you have enjoyed all these post as much as I have, and I look forward to many, many more to come! I'm not sure if I'll ever catch up to Kathy, but I do intend to try, so see you soon!