I really enjoyed your two books, The Automatic Millionaire and Start Late, Finish Rich. I particularly enjoyed the chapter on living rich. This is real important and you’re right, many of us don’t do it. I’m one of the ones that says, “I’ll live good when I retire”. I’m so consumed with working and saving for retirement and the future, that I often feel guilty splurging on entertainment for myself now. I would like to see a whole book on living rich. I also don’t think you can point out enough about feeling bad about past mistakes. I basically have been doing everything your book says, I paid off my condo when I was 34, and have been putting the full amount in my 401K and IRA account since then. Now the guilty part…
I took out an $80,000 home equity loan and put it in the stock market when I thought it was at a real low! Well, I learned the hard way, the bottom really is ZERO! I also haven’t done well investing in my 401K. I’m 43, so I’ve been in it during some bad market times, but I’m only averaging a 3-4% return. I try to be in the highest paying funds offered, (using historical information, of course), and sometimes when the market is doing bad I get out for a while. I now realize I would be better off going with the Balanced Fund and staying in! It would be much more effortless also. Along the way I’ve owned numerous individual stocks that I failed to watch and rode down to, yes, you guessed it, the bottom (zero). And I had quite a few shares! These things really annoy me. I think about how much money I would have now, (it would be hundreds of thousands more), I’m sad to say. Now, I only invest in Mutual Funds which, of course, has worked out much better. I try to focus on what I’m doing right NOW, instead of what I did wrong in the past.
The whole concept of starting early and finishing rich is so great, I’d love to spread the message. The good news is, I’m still young enough to Finish Rich!
