World Education

We always hear about preparing for retirement and putting away into that 401K or IRA in hopes of having that next egg when you are 65. What fun is that? Don’t get me wrong, I definitely believe in the “get rich slowly” technique and saving for the future. Wouldn’t it be much better to enjoy the same kind of money a little earlier in life instead of waiting until you are 69 to cash it out? Along with putting away for retirement, why not also focus on a little mid-life retirement? Depending on your financial situation, it isn’t such a bad idea to make huge cutbacks in how you spend your paycheck. Take the cutbacks and put it towards a good selection of mutual funds that you can manage on your own. Each month, put as much money as you can toward those funds. So if you are in your 20’s, or 30’s, by the time you hit 40’s, you might have built up a pretty good sum into that mutual fund account.

So can you retire on that? Not exactly, but a mini-retirement would mean that you could retire from the pressure of being stuck in the rat race. Knowing that you have built a huge sum of money into an interest bearing investment account can give you the peace of mind knowing that you have a little more coming in each month in the form of capital gains along with your paycheck. Therefore, you don’t have the pressure of always being worried that you are going to be layed-off from your job. Depending on what comes in each month from your investments, you might even be able to go find another job that is much easier, stress free, but pays a little less. That would be a mini-retirement. It’s not exactly quitting work, but it’s quitting the high pressure rat race against people that have no other income, that work every minute of the day to outperform you. And it’s all for nothing. They put in overtime for free. They slave over their projects and take on more responsibility free of charge. You don’t want to throw your life away by joining in on the rat race. Take an alternate route, and put your earnings towards investments while the rest of the rats put their leftover earnings towards meaningless things such as Tivo, computer games, and whatever waste-of-time stuff they spend their residual income on. Invest for a mid-life mini-retirement, and keep participating in your company’s 401K for that end-of-life retirement.

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