Hi Everyone,
The head of our accounting department has a sculpture of a baby turtle hatching out of an egg on her desk. This morning as we were talking it got me thinking about how when a baby sea turtle hatches it makes a rush to the ocean in hopes of surviving. Many of the baby turtles do not survive. It also made me wonder a little bit about personal finances. I have to ask you a couple questions. Is your planning for retirement like a baby sea turtle? Are you making a mad dash to the ocean with your retirement planning hoping to survive when you retire? I ask these questions in light of a recent Wall Street Journal article I read regarding retirement planning. Something about this article made me feel uncomfortable. I finally figured out why I felt uncomfortable. I wasn’t sure I’d done all of the retirement planning I needed to. Over the next week or so I once again thought about my retirement and did some calculations and made sure my plans were still on track. I’d love to have you read this article. So for the next three months the article will be on our website for you to read. I’d be interested in hearing what you feel after you read the article.
Retirement planning is more than just planning. It’s also taking action. As you may recall over the past couple months I’ve been writing down all of my expenditures to see where I’m spending money. After last month’s revelations about all the money I was spending I did some cutting back. Namely, I’ve started bringing my lunch to work almost everyday. Net savings, about $100 per month. I’m not going out to dinner quite as much. Net savings, another $100 per month. I’m not buying quite as many books. (I read a lot.) Net savings, about $50 per month. Do I feel any the worse for wear because I’ve made these cuts in expenditure? Not really. Sure it takes a few minutes every morning to put together a little lunch. And yes, it means that I have to plan out what I’ll cook for dinner but it’s also getting me back into the kitchen more and I love to cook. And now I have about $250 per month more for spending on something else or better yet, saving and investing.
Speaking of saving and investing I want to tell you about our certificates and money market accounts. Once in awhile a member will ask me about a certificate special they saw somewhere. I’ll always tell them that we don’t do certificate specials. Our philosophy is to keep our rates as high as we possibly can everyday and at every maturity. So for no matter how long you want to invest your money we’ve got a certificate for you at an everyday great rate. And as for our money market account rate. Compare it to other financial institutions. You’ll see that there really is no comparison because our rate is so good. Couple the everyday great rates with low minimum opening balances and I think we have savings products that can’t be beat. And if you’re retiring please remember we have very high rates on our IRA certificates as well. If you’re retiring from the civil service you can easily roll your TSP into a credit union IRA. Just call us and we’ll show you how.
It’s said that a sea turtle can live to be 80 years old. Many of us will live even longer than a sea turtle. That’s why it’s so important for us to do our retirement planning and take the necessary actions now and not make it a mad rush to the sea.
Till Next Time,