Baby Boomers: What Has Your Money Done For You Lately?
A few years ago there was a funny TV commercial that ran frequently.
It featured a very frustrated guy who didn’t know how to get his lazy money up off the couch and off to work. You see, he had what a lot of Baby Boomers have… lazy money.
If it were kids we were talking about here, your hard-earned dollars would be lying around on the couch playing video games and binge watching their favorite TV shows. But instead your money is lying lazily in your retirement account not doing much… certainly not earning much interest and not working hard for you at all.
The sad truth is that a lot of retirement accounts won’t carry their owners very far into their actual retirement years. With people living longer and working further into their later years, you might not think that’s a problem. But consider a woman we know who is now 80 who says she has outlived her retirement funds already… and she just stopped working 10 years earlier.
This lovely woman went into retirement thinking she’d be okay, but had always been concerned that she would outlive her money. However, she decided to make the best of things, live frugally and take it one day at a time. She let her financial planner make investment choices for her money, which didn’t end up being a great idea. This woman now admits that she wishes she had taken control of her own retirement account and had invested it in real estate, because she’d still be earning returns; there wouldn’t have been an end to the money until the property was sold. (She understands this now, but for this woman it is too late.)
This is not a one-off story.
Sadly, about 1/3 of older Americans believe they will outlive their savings. According to results of a poll published on Motley Fool, most retiring Baby Boomers have less than 6 figures saved for retirement!
With 10,000 individuals turning 65 every day, that’s a pretty alarming picture.
The truly alarming thing is that it is estimated that 37% of all Baby Boomers have $50,000 or less put away for their golden years. Only 15% of Boomers have put away more than $500,000. Even with that higher number, exactly how golden will their retirement years really be? It’s more likely that they will have to worry about their quality of life as they age… scrimping and saving to get by.
There is a better way, and it involves taking control of one’s own retirement accounts using a self-directed account (SDIRA) whereby you can choose where your money is invested.
So, how can that decision help you?
Let’s say you have taken control of your future by having a custodian help you transfer the money in your retirement savings into an SDIRA. You are no longer paying a financial planner a percentage on your investments; you can choose to put money into a high-yield real estate investment.
Start by educating yourself.
But first you must educate yourself on what types of properties to invest in and what type of returns your SDIRA will receive. (It’s your retirement account that will earn the returns; not you, because it is your account making the investment. You are thereby growing your money in that account the smart way so it will be there for you later.)
Some properties make for better investments than others. But that is true whether you use retirement funds or your own money. You have to weigh out what’s right for you.
You might prefer a set of single-family properties; you might enjoy investing in multifamily properties… or you might go with commercial investments, like self-storage properties.
There are lots of reasons you might enjoy investing in self-storage… and maybe even operate one as its owner. Just one reason is the potential returns.
We won’t lie; we love investing in self-storage properties! So much so, in fact, that we recently published an article giving 12 Ways to Make Serious Money in Self Storage. Here’s a link:
The article is really written for people who want to run a self-storage property, but in reality you can invest without running things. You can be a lender or equity partner. That’s up to you. Each position offers benefits. You just have to understand what they are and make your choice.
Using an SDIRA, you can keep earning returns far into the distant future. It’s a great way to hedge your bets against outliving your savings.
If investing lending on real estate sounds like something you’d like to learn more about, complete our online investor questionnaire. INVEST CONTACT FORM>>>>>>.
