Retirement: Never Walk Backwards

June 19, 2013 - PRLog -- You can turn on your television or even listen to your radio and you can hear people talk about retirement. Over the last few years the thought of retirement has become a real fear to most people. This fear has stemmed from the fact of a huge economic downturn along with pension funds saying they’re severely underfunded. This has brought so much doubt to many about ever being able to retire.

Abraham Lincoln said "I walk slowly, but I never walk backwards"

Although at the time Abraham Lincoln wasn't talking about retirement. His statement should ring true about achieving retirement. You see a lot of people have placed their retirement portfolios in places where peril is a weekly event. The reasoning behind this is great return along with time. The problem that happened with these strategies is what happens if you lose a big sum of your retirement two, three, or five years away from retiring. Having no time and a lot less money this becomes a huge set back on your retirement portfolio.

We use time to make important decisions. Decisions such as retirement and how we are going to achieve it, but the decision we make has to be one that will achieve the goal of retirement. A lot of people had retirement plans and when the market tanked so did their plan. You see the goal had no guarantees to make sure that with time and savings they could achieve it. You see Mr. Lincoln thought everything out and when he went through with his decision he did not move or change his stance.

When deciding how to achieve retirement we need to walk slowly, we need slow steady returns with safety. So if the market losses 5% or even 15% when you’re just about to retire a safety switch comes in leaving your portfolio untouched and allows your plan for retirement to stay on course. This could be through basic diversification of asset classes or through investment vehicles. Design your portfolio to be safe with the ability to grow with moderate returns. Your portfolio should have some of it protected from potential stock market loss. The reason we set goals is so that we can achieve them. This is hard to achieve when we put our retirement portfolio in places that can change in a second and that we have no control over. However, we can control keeping our retirement safe.

The key is being educated on the type of plans that are out there that can protect ones retirement portfolio and earn moderate returns. I believe everyone should at least seek an educated advisor to learn where they can practice diversification in their portfolio and help them accomplish their future goals. No planning option should be overlooked when balancing or creating a retirement portfolio.

Josh is frequently seen in FOX, ABC, The Chicago Chronicle, and CBS Money Watch. In his years as a financial professional, Joshua has seen the lifelong impact of retirement preparation – or lack of preparation—every day. Commenting on his career, Joshua says, “I feel blessed to have helped so many people prepare
for the day when they don’t have to work any longer. As well as helping those in retirement keep it that way.” You can find more about Josh at www.aaronmatthewsfinancial.com