Invaluable Financial Lessons from Those Who've Already Made Mistakes

Invaluable financial lessons from those who've already made mistakes

Yes, hindsight is always 20-20! But, I think in certain instances (fore)sight is much better than 20-20 vision. Depending on your perspective, there can be good news when bad things happen to those who go before us – in the sense that we have the opportunity to learn from their mistakes and therefore prevent their undesirable outcomes from befalling us, too.


I’m guessing that those of us raising teenagers are shaking our heads in agreement right about now. However, that’s not exactly where I’m going with this. For the moment, let’s talk retirement.


Of course I don’t know your specific retirement goals, but after almost twenty years in this field, I’m pretty certain that just like most of the folks I meet, you desire to retire comfortably – as in having enough money to kick back and enjoy life, travel, spoil the grandkids, and all the other fun things you can think of, including leaving a hefty legacy for your loved ones. I think everyone deserves just that – and even more – especially after all of those years of hard work to save and invest.


But let’s face it – you know that’s not reality, don’t you? The very sad truth is that more and more Americans wake up on Day 1 of retirement to the harsh reality that their investments didn’t even come close to the rosy expectations their financial advisors painted for them. In my practice, hardly a day goes by that I don’t speak with several retired (or soon-to-be-retired) folks who are facing this unfortunate dilemma – and these are folks who did everything their so-called financial advisors/media gurus told them to do.

So what went wrong?

To sum up the ONE thing that every single one of these disappointed folks tell me: if they were going to do it all over again, they’d be sure NOT to just follow the herd. Instead, they’d seek the expertise of professionals with a SOLID track record. That amplifies a point I’ve been teaching/writing about for years – planning for your retirement is NOT a routine procedure or an experiment!


Often, retirement investors allow financial advisors to sweet-talk them into signing up for plans or strategies without first demanding any real-life proof of these plans’ success. Most people wouldn’t let a surgeon with no real-life success in a particular procedure operate on them, but for some strange reason they forget to apply that principle when it comes to their retirement planning.


As much as I may love them, I would not hire even my spouse (if I had one) or a blood relative as my retirement counselor if they lacked tangible, real-life proof of success – and hopefully you’d do the same.
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