Some Retirement Advice

✔️ Start early

Do not wait until your retirement age. Then it is really too late to actively manage your retirement. Start thirty years before your retirement age with setting up a retirement savings or investment account, next to using possible state and/or employer's benefits.

✔️ Use various types of investment

Of course there are risks, but investing in stocks will likely have the highest returns over the long run. But be creative and also look at alternatives, such as:

– Pay off your mortgage. This means that you have lower monthly fixed costs and it is very likely that you will be able to sell your house with a profit later on.

– Buy a house/apartment for your studying children. You can sell it again.

– ​​​​Next to stocks and bonds, have a look at art, antiques, gold, old-timers, micro-loans, a second (holiday) house (to rent out, Airbnb), crowd funding, (alt) coins, Chinese porcelain, Dinky Toys… everything is possible, as long as you know what you are doing (and enjoy). Make sure that you balance potential returns and risk.

– Invest in your house, for instance in solar panels to cut the electricity bill. In colder areas you can invest in insulation.

✔️ Spread your assets/investments

By not putting all your eggs in one basket, you diversify. As a result, the risks will decrease. If you chose for investing in various financial assets, also diversify within your portfolio. Make sure that you have a nice mix of investment categories (stocks, bonds, real estate, commodities), regions and sectors. If you have a smaller portfolio use mutual funds or ETFs instead of individual stocks or bonds (because of the costs and spreading of risk). Talking about costs, beware of actively managed mutual funds; they can be more expensive than passive index trackers or ETFs.

✔️ Work longer

This is not on everybody's mind and maybe you absolutely do not want it, but if you enjoy what you are doing and you are fit enough, why not work longer? Below is a graph on people in the US who (have to) work full-time beyond their retirement age. And if you do not want to do it, it is all the more reason to follow our advice.

​​​By actively reserving money for savings or investing, you keep control of your future. So if you don't want to spend your retirement years living in the attic of your children, you know what to do.