$$ After discussing Roth Individual Retirement Account’s (Bank Lingo Roth IRA’s) with an investment professional today, I realized I could have been a millionaire! Don’t get me wrong, I’ll take the $839,343 I will probably make off of the IRA I began at age 25. However, had I started putting three-thousand a year in at age 21, with an average return of eight percent, I would have ended up with $1.1 million.
Sure it’s hard to save when you are young, but it’s worth it if you can. How can you? You have to think about items you could cut down on or cut out of your life. I tried to think of something lots of young 21-25 year olds spend their money on. One common item could be alcohol. Now this is a hypothetical, but say you buy a 20-pack of beer every weekend at the cost of $15. If instead of investing $720 a year on beer, you invested it in a Roth IRA. After 40 years your beverage investment of $28,800 would be worth $201,442.32. That is at a conservative eight percent return. The stock market, on average, over any 10 year period since 1926, has had an average return of 10%.
I’d strongly recommend meeting with a financial planner and discussing investment options. They can plug in all kinds of numbers and tell you what various amounts over various time periods can yield you. Nobody likes to think about being 65, but if you have to be 65, why not be 65 and Rich? $$
If you spend $20 a week on Fast Food; that investment over a 40 year period in a Roth IRA, would net somewhere around $268,589. Is that cheeseburger really worth it?