A message to the younger folks about retirement

I would to take a minute to urge the younger people on this forum (those in thier 20's) To seriously consider starting a reliable retirement fund. I would recomend either a Traditional or a Roth IRA.

In the last couple of years we have seen company pensions vanish and 401K plans fall apart. Even Social Security is likely to go belly up before you guys would ever collect a dime.

The point is that in the end you can only rely on yourself to take care of your retirement, not the company(s) you work for or Uncle Sam. The good news is that IRA accounts can be opened in some places for as little as $25.00. Make a modest contribution on a monthly basis and let the accrued interest do the rest.

Like all compounded interest instruments, with an IRA, the earlier you start, the more it will be worth when you are ready to leave the world of work. Best of all unlike SS, it is truly YOUR Money and cannot be taken away.

I would like to second this suggestion.

I do wish I had thought to put even a little money away for retirement when I was in my 20s. It just never occurred to me. You can park it in an IRA and forget about it, and it will do the growing on its own.

If you are like me, the places I worked in my 20s didn't even have retirement plans, and I'm not sure IRAs existed back then. I wouldn't have even known how to put money away for retirement. But it is really easy today with all the mutual funds to choose from and IRAs.

If you have as little knowledge as I had about those things, you would not know what mutual fund to choose. So here are two ideas:
1) choose a mutual fund indexed to the stock market
2) choose a mutual fund that has a targeted retirement date--it will have a certain mix of investments right for your age that changes as you get older. So if you are 25, choose one for people who will retire in 40 years.

Index funds have very inexpensive expenses (fees you pay to have the fund managed) since they are not actively managed. So you can save a little bit with this type of fund.

The staff at big mutual fund houses like Fidelity, Vangard, etc. will be very happy to help you choose a fund and get the IRA started.