Reuters Says Invest In Yourself

For many years I've been writing about the extent to which retirement will not be the same for people as it was for their parents (obvious observation) and that this has created a problem/challenge for each of us to solve for ourselves--meaning everyone needs to weave together their own personal solution. The other day Yahoo Finance ran an article from Reuters saying pretty much the same thing with some ideas very similar to what I've been talking about all this time.

I make no claim of originality as I think just about everything I have ever said on this subject is common sense that most people would ultimately come to on their own at some point. One item from the article that I had not thought of was bartering. The article had an anecdote of a woman who traded work for free access to a vacation home.

One of the ways the article suggested to "invest in yourself" is to try to beef up your investment knowledge. This doesn't typically come up in an article like this that is not really about investing. It makes sense to do this for a couple of reasons. One is that most people are likely to go it alone, at least I think most do it on their own, and given the importance the more you know the better off you'll be. And although not mentioned in the article there is no end to what can be learned about investing which seems like a pretty good way to stay engaged. There are of course lots of interests where you can always learn something new.

One suggestion I really liked from the article, and that I have written about, was having a "money making skill." The article talked about eBay sales, handyman work, cooking, babysitting and driving as ways to make money which of course can work but the ideas here are limitless. In past posts I've talked about how to monetize a hobby which could take years of pre-planning but would be worth it. I've mentioned my wife's uncle getting offered office work that tied into his career with a major league baseball team (not high paying but something and he could go to games for free), seasonal work for all sorts of things including state and national parks and of course backhoe work. There are many others.

There was even a don't drink soda shout, sort of, but comments about staying fit. The book assigned for my EMT class had a chapter on geriatrics which went into detail about the things that start to happen as we get older--but that start when we aren't that old. We start to lose muscle mass at 28. The loss of muscle mass when we are much older can start to cause various problems. That is just one little thing, there is a lot here but things like serious and regular exercise can make a big difference. Even just staying active doing stuff can help here--my neighbor with the backhoe as exhibit A. To repeat from past posts, he reported to a smoke call when he was 79. At 77 he worked the fireline on a serious fire up a steep hill.

The thing behind the thing with this article is the extent to which these types of suggestions can, to use my term, relieve a portion of the burden that would otherwise be placed on the portfolio. In my opinion these types of issues need to be sorted out before getting to how manage an investment portfolio as life choices and life circumstance factor heavily into asset allocation.

My brother took this picture the other night when Oregon State played at Arizona State, I thought it was pretty cool.