If you think you’ve made a lot of mistakes in preparing for retirement, you are not alone. Today, I’m going to address some of the common mistakes that people make and how if you identify with them, you can get yourself back on the right track.  So we’re talking about mistakes that people make that can ruin their retirement. Number one mistake, saving too little. People just don’t save enough and for whatever reason, you can’t not sow a crop and then expect to reap that crop at the end. And people put it off. Procrastination is humongous. It’s huge. You always intend to do it. And some of you are watching this and you’re saying, “Yeah, I’ve always intended to get started. I should get started. I might get started,” and you just don’t do it. The other thing is a lot of people get started, but they fail to automate it. They fail to take the automatic withdrawals out of their 401(k), and so therefore they get the full paycheck and they say, “Well, I’ll write a check for it after it happens.” But the proof is in the pudding that only if you automate it does it really, really work for you.

And it ends up that you save too little. And the other thing I would say is you fail to take care of precautions. You failed to insure yourself the right way. You’re trying to save for retirement, but you’ve saved too little because you didn’t have the right kind of insurance, you didn’t have the right kind of health insurance, you didn’t have the right kind of insurance on your car, on your house, on something, and you got hit with a really big, big expense that took a lot of money out of your savings just simply because you weren’t insured the right way. So saving too little or not having enough in the pot can really hurt you. The second mistake that I see is people piling on the debt. And people have so much debt, and this is a matter of just disciplining yourself, and I know that’s a terrible word, but disciplining yourself not to use the credit cards just because you want something and not to just go buy it with that immediacy microwave approach or piling on too much student loan debt and student loan debts are sometimes a result of not saving enough for the student loan as the child was growing up and boom, they turned 18.

You don’t have any recourse except to take that gigantic parent plus loan. Another thing I’ve seen is people sometimes in their fifties, 55, 60, they’re refi-ing. And if you can get a great rate, that’s good, but they’re refi-ing and they’re having a 30-year mortgage tacked onto everything that they owe. If you get a 30-year mortgage at the age of 55, you’re going to be paying that until you’re 85. And a lot of it just goes back to like I have alluded to, having an out of controlled budget. The third mistake is shiny object investment strategy. I mean by that is your buddy Bob at the water cooler told you about this great investment in Nigeria, but you’ve got to have that $10,000 check there. You say, “I wouldn’t do something that ridiculous.” But a lot of people do other things that are ridiculous and chasing shiny objects. The first one in, if something really goes well, if it’s an investment that’s rolled out, you’re going to make a lot of money.

The problem is, if you chase that through the years, the first one in to all of the investments across the spectrum, usually proverbially, you lose their shorts, okay? Because they more fail than succeed. So just a slow steady strategy eliminates the risk. Risk is the biggest thing you’re going to take. And there’s a risk in every kind of investment. And so many people, you put a few of these things together, they’re behind the eight-ball, they’re in debt, they realize they really need to get started. So they chase every shiny investment strategy that’s out there and they take too much risk and they take too much risk for what they’re comfortable with, and so therefore, they really get behind it. And the other issue with shiny object investment is some people do that because they realize they’re really behind the eight-ball. They’ve got only a limited amount of T-I-M-E, time. When time is not on your side, you’re working from behind the eight-ball and it really does hurt you and it ruins a great retirement.

So if you’re headed down the wrong road and you realize it and you turn around, you’re still on the wrong road. You’ve just turned around. So how do you take the steps that you need to take to start moving in the right direction? All right, let’s address procrastination. Stop. Okay, just get started. If you’ve got a plan or you need a plan, get started to do it. Put a date on it, move, get started in doing it and moving in the right direction by saving. The best way to do that is to automate it. If you’ve got opportunity at work for a 401(k), you need to call your HR department the very first next day you go back to work, if you’re listening to this at work. Give them a call right now and tell them, I want to get enrolled in the 401(k), or I want to up what I’m contributing to the 401(k).

If you don’t have a 401(k) or a 403(b), you need to get an IRA or a Roth IRA started. But get started. If you’ve got credit card debt, then there’s a way to deal with that. First of all, stop spending. Stop digging the hole. John Maxwell’s a great leadership guru and he always says that if you realize you’re digging yourself a hole and you want to get out of it, the first step is to stop digging. And that’s the way it is with credit cards. And I’m not yelling at you. A lot of people have credit card debt. Four months ago it went over $1 trillion for the first time in America. So if you have credit card debt, what you do is… Most people have more than one, so take the smallest one you owe and just pay it off, pay extra on it.

Once you get it done, apply that to the next biggest one, to the next biggest one. It gives you a snowball effect of having some success, but take care of your credit cards. If you’ve got a mortgage and you’re close to retirement, you say, “I’d really like to not have that mortgage in retirement.” Well, time it, start paying extra so that by the time you retire, you’re going to have your mortgage paid off. I liken it to running the low hurdles in retirement versus running the high hurdles every single month. If you’re investing, don’t chase shiny objects. Just have a good solid portfolio that’s aligned with your risk and what kind of risk tolerance you are able to take. In other words, what I’m saying is take these steps to overcome these common things that ruin people’s retirement. Hey, if you realize you’re behind the eight-ball, there’s several things that you can do to help yourself and we can help you.

First, you can contact us. You can go to [email protected]. That’s M-O-S-L-E-Y, [email protected]. You can send us an email, we’ll get back with you to set up a phone call, zoom, or face to face meeting. You can also check out our complete website, www.mosleywealthmanagement.com, or for more info on other topics, go to our YouTube channel, “Mosley Wealth Management”.

As I say every week, give me 10 to 12 minutes and I’ll do my best to increase your financial knowledge and help you ease into retirement.