Should kids start now to have a good retirement?
For most people this isn’t much of a consideration. You’re just hoping you can save enough to help with college expenses and hopefully have enough for your own retirement. But stop and think about this. What would your kids have for assets if they started saving for retirement now?
I’ve given this some thought and done a bit of research. The govenment makes it hard to just open a retirement account when you’re super young and don’t have income. Nearly impossible really. But once the kids are old enough to have a job you can start an IRA for them. If they start young enough the contributions don’t have to be very much for that amount to snowball with time and turn into millions upon millions they would have for retirement. Don’t you wish your parents had given this same thought to your future? How much more secure would you feel if you already had $200,000 in retirement savings and you’re still decades from retirement? These kinds of things are possible because of the benefit of time. The longer you have to invest, the more that money compounds and turns into bigger and bigger amounts.
Here’s another thing to consider. Your parents could have an IRA and name your kids (their grandkids) as the beneficiary. If your parents don’t use all that IRA money before they die, then your kids inherit it. They are required to withdraw a certain amount each year, but it’s small and that money would sit and compound every year until your kids retire. For some that could mean a few hundred thousand sitting there building for 60 more years. Wow. I did the math once and came up with about $30 million that my kids would have to retire on.
I learned this from a book called “Make your kid a millionaire” by Kevin McKinley. I highly recommend reading it and getting the ball rolling on at least one of his 11 methods for helping to secure your kids future. What is that worth to you?
About the Author
The author loves writing about nearly anything. More curious topics include Hon file cabinets and garment bags that roll and also drop leaf kitchen table.
This entry was posted on Monday, January 25th, 2010 at 4:48 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.