If you run a craft business or have an artistic streak, you may have considered making money with your creative venture online. Etsy is a popular route but comes with its own set of new technology, strategies, and challenges that can be overwhelming to the newcomer. With all of the options and competition out there […]
The post How to Be Successful on Etsy appeared first on The Work at Home Woman.
Better yet, do you already have a “go bag” and escape route planned in case the flesh-eating undead surface?
If so, then we found a scholarship for you, boils and ghouls. But beware, it will take a little brains to make the final cut.
This annual scholarship awards $2,000 toward the winner’s college education for the best written essay on surviving the zombie apocalypse.
Don’t moan and groan at the word “essay.”
You have 250 words or less to detail a survival plan. Technically, that’s $8 per word if you win — and write a full 250 words.
Needless to say, that is going to take some deadication.
Unlike the chaos of a post-apocalyptic world, there are a few rules to enter this scholarship.
All applicants must be at least 13 years old and legal residents of all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
In addition, you must be enrolled in an accredited postsecondary institution of higher education when you apply or by the fall of 2024.
The premise of this year’s essay is survival. Student essays must answer the following question:
“Imagine that your high school or college has been overrun with zombies. Your math professor, the cafeteria ladies, and even your best friend have all joined the walking dead. Flesh out a plan to avoid the zombies, including where you’d hide and the top five things you’d bring to stay alive.”
Essays will be judged 25% on creativity, 25% on originality, 25% on writing ability and 25% on overall excellence. The rules state that judges are looking for applicants who follow directions and creatively address the topic.
The deadline to apply for the Zombie Apocalypse Scholarship is October 31, 2018, aka Halloween.
How’s that for spooky?
Don’t be scared to dig in. We suggest going with your gut instinct.
Stephanie Bolling is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder. She wrote more than 250 words in this article.
This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.
Is it too soon to start playing Christmas music?
I digress.
Before you start hanging twinkle lights, 7-Eleven is giving you a reason to celebrate that should hold you over until the weather cools down.
Now through Aug. 19, when you buy any size or flavor of Slurpee you can get a second of equal or smaller size for free!
During this BOGO event, you’ll be able to put both Slurpees on your 7Rewards “buy six, get the seventh free” drink offer on the 7-Eleven mobile app.
In addition to certain locations, stores in Michigan aren’t participating. But does it even get hot there?
Jen Smith is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder. She gives money-saving and debt-payoff tips on Instagram at @savingwithspunk.
This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.
After so many years of being limited to pizza and Chinese, there was something glorious about being able to order food delivery from just about any restaurant I could imagine. Ice cream and cupcakes for delivery? Yes, please!
But, of course, this wasn’t good news for the diet I was planning to start every Monday, and it was even worse news for my budget. Ordering out can be expensive enough, and that $7 sub can quickly turn into a $15 sub after adding on the booking fee and tip.
This month, however, we can all feel a little less guilty about ordering out, thanks to this Uber Eats promo.
Uber Eats is celebrating “Summer Fridays” by offering free delivery every Friday in August. All you have to do is create an account through the Uber Eats website, or download the app for Android or iPhone, then keep an eye on your email for the free delivery promo code. A new code will be sent to your email every Friday and will be valid on orders placed from 2 to 5 p.m.
And if you already have an Uber Eats account, then you should already be receiving the offer — so be sure to check your inbox!
Uber Eats has also announced it’s restructuring its booking fees. Rather than offering a flat fee — which was originally around $4.99, depending on the city — Uber Eats will now charge booking fees according to distance.
This means if you order from your favorite restaurant right around the corner, you can expect to pay less than the usual $4.99 fee. But if you order from a restaurant across town, you can expect to pay a bit more.
This is good news if you’re the indecisive type like me. With so many options to choose from, deciding what to order from Uber Eats can become an hourlong task. But now, you can sort through participating restaurants according to the booking fee to make the decision easier.
If you need some ideas on what to eat for the rest of the week, while saving up to order out this Friday, then check out these cheap crock pot recipes. And if you want to use Uber Eats to make some extra cash, then check out these tips for how to become an Uber Eats driver.
Jessica Gray is an editorial assistant at The Penny Hoarder.
This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.
When I was growing up, money was scarce. My father worked in a factory some of the time and my mother was a stay-at-home mom, so even when he was working there wasn’t a ton of money, and when he was laid off… things got tight. My father was a jack-of-all-trades and a pretty good small-scale commercial fisherman on the side, so we managed to muddle through. Scarcity was a real thing, though, especially when I was younger. (My father eventually moved up into a pretty stable position that paid well when I was older because he was willing to take on some training for a more complex job that some of his coworkers wouldn’t do.)
In my own professional life, there’s never been a situation where there wasn’t enough money coming in to keep the bills paid and food on the table. Scarcity isn’t something I’ve had to directly face.
Even given that, there is still sometimes an underlying internal sense of scarcity. It’s that fleeting sense of scarcity that convinces me to clean my plate even when I’m no longer hungry, or to stock up on some staples to a comically absurd level, or to have a strong desire to buy something on sale that I don’t really need because it might not ever be nearly that inexpensive gain.
It’s an interesting problem, and it’s one that I’m not alone in facing. My closest friend (that I’m not married to) has echoed the same type of feeling before. He grew up without much money, too, and those same feelings sometimes tap on his shoulder. It’s a feeling echoed by a few readers, too.
Scarcity is this overarching sense that there is “not enough” in your life. It’s often connected to money, but it can connect to things like physical possessions, relationships, food, and countless other things in life.
Often, that internal sense of scarcity comes from a situation in life where there genuinely isn’t enough of something to go around. Maybe you experienced a situation as a child where your parents couldn’t pay the bills, or maybe as an adult you couldn’t make ends meet. Perhaps there wasn’t enough food in the house to put a reasonable dinner on the table. Perhaps you spent your teen years longing for just one new video game but there was never a situation where you could actually have that game.
However, the scarcity mindset goes beyond those situations and creates difficulty and poor choices even when there is plenty in your life. I’m overweight, but there are still times when I feel a strong sense of food scarcity and eat more than I should, for example. Someone who had trouble making ends meet for a while because of almost no income might still feel strongly driven to spend their whole check out of a sense of “scarcity.” Someone might be driven to be unethical at work because of a sense of “scarcity” of good work positions, even when there are plenty of jobs to go around.
In this article, I’m going to mostly focus on financial scarcity mindsets, but much of what I have to say applies to scarcity with regards to things like food on your plate and other aspects of life.
As I alluded to above, while genuine scarcity may be a fact of life for some, the real challenge for many people is the persistent mindset of “scarcity.” Often, it’s an “echo” of earlier experience where they faced some type of genuine scarcity and it embedded a sense of continuing scarcity in their mind even when there’s enough to go around.
This idea of “scarcity,” and the counterbalancing idea of “abundance,” is a core idea of Stephen Covey’s book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. In that book, Covey describes scarcity:
Most people are deeply scripted in what I call the Scarcity Mentality. They see life as having only so much, as though there were only one pie out there. And if someone were to get a big piece of the pie, it would mean less for everybody else.
The Scarcity Mentality is the zero-sum paradigm of life. People with a Scarcity Mentality have a very difficult time sharing recognition and credit, power or profit – even with those who help in the production. The also have a a very hard time being genuinely happy for the success of other people.
And then, later, abundance:
The Abundance Mentality, on the other hand, flows out of a deep inner sense of personal worth and security. It is the paradigm that there is plenty out there and enough to spare for everybody. It results in sharing of prestige, of recognition, of profits, of decision making. It opens possibilities, options, alternatives, and creativity.
Scarcity is centered around the idea that there isn’t enough of something to cover what everyone needs or wants, so in order to ensure that you have enough to cover what you need or want, you’d better use what you have as soon as possible and guard your territory. This holds true for virtually every kind of resource: money, time, relationships, grades, recognition, credit, food on your plate, and on and on and on.
Abundance is centered around the idea that there is more than enough of that something for everyone to have what they need or want. Thus, there’s much less need to spend all of your money unless there’s a reason or to clean your plate unless you’re actually hungry. There’s much less reason to “fight” someone else for a good grade because you can both earn an A.
The thing is, in our modern and abundant world, actual scarcity is a pretty rare thing. Most Americans earn more than enough money to cover their needs and many wants.
Rather, many Americans feel an artificial sense of scarcity, particularly financial scarcity. The reason is that, although they have no trouble actually covering their basic needs, the wants of the average American often vastly exceed their income level and thus there’s this sense that we just don’t have enough money to live the life we want to live. That’s scarcity thinking, and it leads directly to the kind of behavior Covey describes above: “[p]eople with a Scarcity Mentality have a very difficult time sharing recognition and credit, power or profit – even with those who help in the production.”
In other words, when people feel financial scarcity, they tend to spend all of their money and are greedy for more. You can see this as a broader American trend: the average savings rate of Americans hovers around 2.4%, and that includes things like people who only contribute to their 401(k) up to the employer match. Also, 78% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. That indicates that a lot of Americans are living as though they’re in scarcity, even though most of them aren’t and many more wouldn’t be with a little financial discipline.
The problem, of course, is that our brains are shouting “scarcity!” even when it’s not really present. We have to spend this money now because we might not get to spend it when we’re older. We want this thing now because it might not be available later. In both of those cases (and many more), we’re driven to foolish personal finance behavior.
I’m absolutely guilty of “scarcity” thinking at times. “Scarcity” thinking has steered me to spend more than I should, to eat more than I should, and so on.
However, I’ve found that there are a number of things a person can do to shut down “scarcity” thinking (at least to an extent) and to help prevent the worst excesses of it.
The most powerful tool to fight back against a scarcity mindset is to directly show yourself that the scarcity you perceive isn’t the reality of things and that abundance is the true face of the situation. How do you do that, though, if your natural instinct is generally toward scarcity? You fight back against it with discipline.
The thing is, self-discipline over a long period of time is hard to maintain. Setting some kind of new “rule” for your life sounds noble, but it doesn’t often work over the long haul.
This is especially true here when you’re simply trying to show yourself that the real picture of things is abundance. You don’t need the long haul for that. You just need enough time to see that something you thought of as “scarce” is actually abundant.
For me, the most effective way of doing this is a thirty day challenge. I simply pick a new rule by which to live my life and do it for thirty days. Usually, the purpose of that rule is to simply try out a life change or to see if something works or is actually true for myself.
If you’re trying to impress the idea of financial abundance into your life, frugality and thirty day challenges go together like bread and butter. There’s a nearly infinite array of thirty day challenges that a person can take on that will show you that, by putting a restriction of some kind on your finances, you can still get by and meet your needs and core wants with plenty left over.
Some examples:
For thirty days, I will make all of my meals at home.
For thirty days, I will not buy any books and will use the library if I want to read one I don’t have.
For thirty days, I won’t buy anything online.
For thirty days, I will eat leftovers for lunch.
For thirty days, I will write down every single dime I spend.
For thirty days, the only beverage I will drink will be water.
For thirty days, I will make my own coffee at home or at work and not visit a coffee shop.
I think you’re starting to get the idea. Use a thirty day challenge to nudge yourself into some kind of spending restriction and then see how life actually is when you apply that restriction. When you take it off, life will seem abundant, and it’ll stay that way if you stick with the new initiative.
By this, I generally mean that you should strive to spend less time watching television, browsing websites, flipping through magazines, and reading social media. Cut those things out of your life as much as possible.
Why? Almost all of those things subtly encourage you in countless ways to buy into the idea of scarcity. They constantly nudge you with the idea that you should want more and more things and that people who have those things somehow have an inherently better life and that your life is inadequate if you don’t have those things. Much of the news media tends to nudge you with the idea that things are dangerous so you better grab onto everything you can grab because there may not be enough to go around. Social media seems to revolve heavily around arguing and looking at the public face of others and desiring things you do not have.
All of those things encourage and perpetuate a scarcity mindset. All of those things nudge people to believe that other people have more desirable things, that the world is an unsafe place, and that you need to consume and grab onto everything you can if you want to be safe and desirable and interesting.
Turn it off. Turn all of it off. Cancel your cable. Delete social media apps from your smartphone. You’ll be so much better off and you’ll find it so much easier to move away from scarcity thinking.
It becomes much easier to stick with these new initiatives, though, if you set big goals for yourself and have something you’re working toward. Without some kind of general direction for your actions, it can be very easy to become complacent and fall back on earlier scarcity habits. On the other hand, with a goal, there is a reason beyond mere appreciation of abundance to continue on with your thirty day challenges.
What is it that you want to achieve in your future? Do you want to be free from debt? Practicing frugality and using the proceeds to make your debt melt away is a powerful example of abundant thinking at work. Do you want to have a secure retirement? Practicing frugality until abundance feels natural makes it so much easier to kick up those retirement savings. Do you want to own your own home? The same thing is true. Do you want your children to be able to go to college without the full burden of student loans? Again, the same thing is true.
Goals are much, much easier to achieve if you’ve set the stage with abundant thinking rather than scarcity thinking. If you go into a goal with a perspective of scarcity and see this goal as just another demand on a limited resource pool, it’s always going to be hard to achieve it. On the other hand, if you go into a goal with an understanding that there will always be resources available for the important things in life, it becomes much easier to achieve big goals.
For me, goal setting comes down to spending time thinking deeply about what’s actually important in my life. What matters the most here? What really makes my life worth living? What do I really want out of my life, both now and in the future? That kind of thinking really helps you figure out what’s important to you and helps you set big goals. In a very practical way, the most useful tool I’ve ever found for figuring out what I really valued and turning them into practical goals is the “three morning pages” journaling routine, where I sit down with a notebook and strive to fill three pages of it with whatever comes into my brain. This often turns into an exploration of what I truly care about and what I can do to manifest that in my life, which sets the stage for practical goal setting with goals that are really meaningful to me. When I have goals that are truly meaningful to me, I am strongly motivated to achieve them and I tend to hold onto the results of successful thirty day challenges if they help me move toward that goal in a real way.
Another powerful tool I’ve found is that of automation. When I am feeling very far toward the “abundant” end of the scale in terms of how I feel about my finances, I often set up automatic savings and investments that reflect that sense of abundance. I set up savings plans that are pretty aggressive because I have this strong sense that I have more than enough in life.
At other times, when I’m not feeling quite as “abundant,” those automatic rules still take effect and I still keep saving for my goals in an aggressive fashion. If I were making the decision as to how much to save in that single moment, I might not save nearly as much, or might not save anything at all. Instead, because of automation that I set up when I was feeling very abundant, I’m still going to save at the much more abundant rate. That’s a big win for me over the long haul.
Couldn’t I just override that automatic savings strategy? Sure, but the reality is that leaving automatic savings plans alone is the path of least resistance, and we all follow the path of least resistance in most aspects of life until something becomes deeply onerous. In other words, unless I did a complete 180 and suddenly utterly hated that savings plan, I’m very much likely to just leave it in place and deal with it. I might internally grumble a bit about how much was being whisked away into other savings and investing accounts, but I’m not likely to change it – that would take effort, and the path of least resistance causes me to leave things alone.
Over time, I find that automation like this slowly nudges me to think in a more abundant way. I see that my life is still good, yet I’m also able to march right toward financial goals. That gives a strong constant sense that there really is enough money to go around, and finances in general seem less stressful.
The key to all of this is understanding that a big part of our desire to spend and our feeling of not having “enough” comes from a scarcity mindset, a mindset that many of us were forced to have as a child and one that media perpetuates in our adulthood.
In reality, the vast majority of Americans have far more than they need and far more than enough to cover their basic wants. The trick is to not become obsessed with all of those lesser wants and let that cloud you from all of the things that you already have in your life.
For me, the four above strategies help, but, at the same time, scarcity thinking and abundance thinking are a spectrum and we all slide back and forth along that spectrum over time. Those strategies are meant to just nudge you a little closer to the “abundance” end of the spectrum most of the time, which, in my experience, leads to far better financial and life choices.
Good luck!
The post The Battle Against Scarcity appeared first on The Simple Dollar.
In our increasingly uncertain world, there’s still one thing almost everyone seems to agree on: the value of a college degree. In the modern economy, it’s seen as a given that we should bear almost any cost to ensure that our children graduate from college.
That being the case, it was illuminating to read “The Case Against Education,” a book by George Mason University economics professor Bryan Caplan that challenges many of the standard talking points used to defend the higher education system.
Given its title, I was expecting the book to challenge the value of a college degree altogether. Interestingly, Caplan doesn’t go that route. He admits early on that “the earnings premium for college graduates has rocketed to 73 percent—that is, those with a bachelor’s degree earn, on average, 73 percent more than those who have only a high-school diploma.”
Case closed, right? College is the greatest thing since sliced bread? Not so fast.
The problem, as Caplan sees it, is not whether college pays off, but why. He also tackles whether we can get similar results without spending as much money.
Here are a couple of the main problems Caplan sees with higher education, as well as some solutions.
The crux of the problem with higher education, according to Caplan, is that “students spend thousands of hours studying subjects irrelevant to the modern labor market.”
Reading that line made me think of one of my father’s favorite quips upon hearing an insult that hits too close to home: “Hey, I resemble that comment!”
While in college, I spent many hours learning about poetry, hieroglyphics, and Greek mythology. It was fun, but I can’t say my knowledge of those topics helped me much while looking for a job. When I think about how much I was paying for those classes, I want to pull my hair out.
In Caplan’s eyes, a big reason most kids spend so much time learning stuff that doesn’t matter is because the teachers themselves aren’t prepared to teach real job skills. “Educators… have little firsthand knowledge of the modern workplace,” Caplan writes. It almost goes without saying that it’s a bad idea to fork over huge sums of money to study irrelevant topics taught by teachers who, while certainly well-meaning, aren’t making students job-ready.
Even worse, students aren’t retaining much knowledge from college, regardless of what we study. Caplan opened my eyes to a large-scale study from the U.S. Department of Education which looked at adult literacy. The results were grim, as less than one-third of college graduates got a score of “proficient.”
So, if we aren’t learning or retaining much from college classes, what purpose are they serving? According to Caplan, the college experience is really all about a phenomenon known as signaling.
One of Caplan’s goals with the book is to shine on a light on the importance of signaling.
Signaling refers to the idea that many behaviors people engage in are done so not because they’re intrinsically valuable, but because of what they signal to others. For example, people who drive fancy cars are generally trying to signal, “I am wealthy!” even though the mere act that they have that car tells us very little about their finances.
Could we be using a college degree in the same way we use fancy cars and fancy clothes?
Caplan thinks so. He believes we’re not so much learning in college, but rather signaling that we’re conscientious and hardworking. As Caplan puts it, “The labor market doesn’t pay you for the useless subjects you master; it pays you for the preexisting traits you signal by mastering them.” Essentially, this means that all the expense of college could be done away with if we could just figure out a more efficient way of showing employers that we’re ready to be good workers.
Lest you think this is a fringe idea, Caplan reveals that he’s building on the work of several Nobel laureates in economics who have contributed to the signaling theory. In studying several factors related to college degrees and subsequent earnings, Caplan concludes that signaling accounts for 80% of the value of a college degree. He astutely notes that “every college student who does the least work required to get good grades silently endorses the theory.”
Even if the signaling hypothesis is not as ironclad as Caplan claims, the theory is worth some deep thought. Is higher education helping with the development of a knowledgeable society (what’s sometimes called “human capital”), or are we teaching our young people that all that really matters is signaling that they have the right traits to get a good job?
If it’s the latter, shouldn’t there be ways of going about signaling that don’t perpetuate a massive student loan crisis with increasing default rates?
While the main focus of the book is to point out flaws in the education system, Caplan is not all doom and gloom. He offers up some ways to get the most out of one’s education.
First, if you go to college and you want a return on your investment, you should seriously consider studying subjects that will result in marketable job skills. No surprises here, as the STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) mostly get Caplan’s blessing.
I believe Caplan would also agree with The Simple Dollar’s suggestion to check the stats before picking your major. If you are going to invest so much time and money into a degree, it’s critical that you at least give yourself the option of finding high paying work when it’s all said and done.
Finally, Caplan also touts the benefits of vocational school, where students quickly learn narrow skills for specific, in-demand jobs. These schools are cheap and easy ways for people to get job-ready when they think they might not be a good fit for college. Caplan notes that “research, though a bit sparse, suggests that vocational education raises pay, reduces unemployment, and increases the rate of high-school completion.”
As someone who has previously wondered whether I’d have been better off going to community college instead of attending Harvard, I’ll admit I was the ideal audience for this book. And while I agree with a lot of the points, I should also point out a couple of areas where I felt Caplan’s case was weak.
For one thing, he rails against the humanities as a mostly useless institution, and proclaims that those who see its benefits are engaging in “wishful thinking.” As someone who’s passionate about literature and writing, this rubs me the wrong way. There’s something to be said about wanting to produce good of intangible significance, even if it means forgoing a lucrative career. Furthermore, I’ve found that writing skills (which are honed in the humanities) are in high demand on the job market.
Another point of contention is Caplan’s call for a “complete separation of school and state.” He thinks “government should stop using tax dollars to fund education of any kind.” This kind of policy would be destabilizing and negatively affect millions of kids. I’m all for trying bold things, but saying something that outlandish only serves to distract from the more interesting points he makes.
For a thorough piece that challenges many of Caplan’s assertions, check out this article by The Boston Review.
Reading Caplan’s book will make you want to be a better, more efficient person. If you already wasted a lot of time and money in college, like me, than you’ll be motivated to make up for lost time. If you’re about to embark on your college journey, it will be a sobering reminder to make the most of your time.
Caplan is convincing when he argues that if we eliminate many of the wasteful aspects of college, and make sure only the students who’ll truly benefit from college attend in the first place, we will all be better off. If you want to read a book that makes you challenge your preconceived notions and provides quite a few interesting thought experiments, I highly recommend giving “The Case Against Education” a read.
More by Drew Housman:
The post Why This Professor Says College Is a Waste of Money appeared first on The Simple Dollar.
As two watchdogs launch a campaign to raise awareness of pension scams by phone, text, online or on social media, we ask whether you have been scammed. Select the option below that’s most relevant.
Failure to start planning your retirement in your 20s, 30s or however old you happen to be now is more dangerous and misguided than it ever has been. If you don’t have a good plan, you’re putting your future security and a really fun period of life in serious jeopardy.
Some people think a retirement plan is just a savings account. However, it should be much more.
Every financial decision you make now affects your overall lifetime wealth and ability to retire securely. Buying a house, obtaining student loans, having children, buying new cars or saving and investing your income — they can all have huge impacts on what resources you’ll have after retirement.
Retirement is the end game of all the years you are occupied with earning, spending and saving.
Your retirement plan should be a detailed account of all aspects of your finances now and into the future. That may sound like a tall order, but it doesn’t have to be. There are some online tools that can help you immediately. The NewRetirement retirement planning calculator is a comprehensive and detailed system. It’s easy to get started, see a personalized assessment and find ways to strengthen your plan.
Here are seven reasons it is more important than ever to get a retirement plan — now.
It is not your imagination. It is hard to get ahead. Perhaps harder than ever before. According to Pew Research, since the turn of the century the middle class has shrunk in every state but Hawaii.
This means that it’s more important than ever to adopt smart personal finance habits. Live within your means, save money for retirement, invest wisely, only borrow if it will help you get ahead (like buying a house), have an emergency fund and backup plans in case things go awry. Manage your money like someone wealthy even if you are not.
First of all, in case you don’t already know, Social Security is only meant to supplement retirement income — not be your retirement plan. It’s typically not adequate to fund living expenses in retirement.
However, it may be risky to expect your Social Security income at all. According to a recent report from the Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees, Social Security will not have enough money to pay off its obligations starting in 2034 — just 16 years from now. At that time, Social Security will only be able to afford to pay three-quarters of what it owes.
Out-of-pocket medical costs are the third biggest expense for most retirees. And don’t expect much help from the government for your health care bills.
Yep… the news about your government benefits gets even worse. The same Board of Trustee report suggests that Medicare will be unable to meet their obligations starting in 2039.
Apparently, financial literacy is lower than most people expect. Fidelity asked more than 2,000 people questions in eight different retirement categories. Only about 30% of the questions were answered correctly. Absolutely no one got all the questions correct and the highest overall grade was 79 percent. Can you do better?
Whether you score well or not on the quiz, creating a retirement plan can be the best way to start learning about financial concepts. A good online retirement platform allows you to play with your own numbers and find opportunities.
Wouldn’t it be nice to retire without a single regret? Maybe you can learn from the common mistakes as listed by today’s retiree’s and do just that.
NewRetirement surveyed users to find out the secrets of a successful retirement plan and they found that retirees have some common regrets. They include:
Ugh… with all this bad news, you’re probably feeling the clear and present danger of not having a retirement plan.
The good news? It is easy to reduce stress. Just create a plan as soon as possible.
According to the American Psychological Association, it may cause anxiety to set up a plan, but it greatly reduces stress over the long term.
If you are reading this and thinking that retirement seems like an impossible dream, think again.
A good plan will get you there. And a really good plan and lots of discipline can get there in a really short period of time.
There is a movement called, “F.I.R.E.,” which stands for financial independence, retire early. Proponents of F.I.R.E. like Mr. Money Mustache opt to live frugally and save up to 80% of their income. In exchange, they get to achieve financial independence at a very early age — like in their 30s or 40s.
Retirement can be done. It doesn’t need to be painful. It just takes a plan.
Kathleen Coxwell is a reformed personal finance deadbeat. After recovering from a student loan disaster, she used her know how to help her parents and in-laws plan for retirement. And seeing a big need for unbiased financial advice and tools, she co-founded NewRetirement, a company dedicated to helping people imagine and plan for a secure financial future.
This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.
