Ordinary Job. Extraordinary Retirement.
The simple habits that turned a modest income into a 7-figure nest egg
This client was a machinist for a major National Laboratory. He started his career making $4.25/hour in the early 1980s which would be $17/hour today. He retired in 2019 and had his highest-earning year at $88,000. He retired with more than $1.5MM in his retirement account(s), paid off his home, paid off a second home in the mountains, and carried no consumer debt.
He and his wife did not live a lifestyle of watching every penny they made, saving an inordinate amount from each paycheck, and eating beans and rice as Dave Ramsey would say. They did save a lot of money, but also enjoyed life and traveled with their child and eventual grandchildren.
So how in the world did they save over 17x their annual income?
He was our wealthiest client by extrapolation of how much he earned compared to what he saved. We had clients that made $1MM/year but were nowhere near having over $10MM saved let alone 17x their annual income. We don’t think he understood how rare and difficult that is, but he did have an answer when we posed this question to him.
“…he never missed a paycheck where he wasn’t putting at least something into his 401k.”
He told us that when he was first hired at his job, his foreman walked him down to the HR office and made him start contributing to his 401k immediately. He didn’t care if he put $5 or $100/paycheck, but he had to contribute something.
He said he never missed a paycheck where he wasn’t putting at least something into his 401k. He did admit he had to reduce at times as expenses came up, as life does happen to people.
There was another recipe that they had in baking this multi-million dollar estate (real estate included), they weren’t afraid of growth. They didn’t try to time the market or get scared and pull everything out of their investments and move it into cash. He simply stayed disciplined and sought professional help where he felt he lacked the knowledge, and had a professional money manager take care of all his investing.
Your Money, Your Moves’ mission is to help our readers become like this client. We firmly believe ANYONE can do what he did.
Earnings-wise they were not unique or special. If you averaged out their lifetime earnings and divided that by their working years, we would be willing to bet they averaged no more than $50k/year, and that is likely a high number.
You can do it, and we know you can with the help of this newsletter. It will help you get to your goals a bit more smoothly with a little nudging along the way. You can certainly hire a financial advisor if you are overwhelmed, but this newsletter can be a viable alternative.