Common Financial Sense: Simple Strategies for Successful 401(k) & 403(b) Retirement Plan Investing

How to Succeed in your Retirement Investment Plan:

An interview with nationally recognized investment expert Harris Nydick based on the book “Common Financial Sense” that he co-authored with Greg Makowski.

Interview Summary

Everyone can have a wonderful financial future and can be financially independent.


1) Start as soon as possible

People should be thinking about starting a 401k as soon as they get their first job. That way you will have 30-40 years until you retire. And during that time, your money will be growing at a compounded rate!

Assuming you make $45-50,000 a year, see if you can put away in your 401k 6% of your salary. It sounds like a lot, but it comes to about 50 bucks a week. With a reasonable rate of return, you’re going to have nearly two million dollars at retirement. Of that two million dollars, 3/4 is going from compounding, not from the money that you put in!

2) It is never too late to start investing.

If you’re starting later, you’re not going to have two million dollars at retirement, but you will still end up with a lot more than you thought. That is the gift of compounding.

3) Don’t spend time waiting for the “great” investment. Go for the “good” investments.

People think they need to invest in the “great” investment. Bad news, there’s not a lot of great investments that are self-evident right now. Investments that are great investments, were wonderful and especially good at a time before anybody understood them to be good. There’s not a lot of great investments out there and we spend our time sifting through the hay looking for those needles in the haystack. That’s a mistake because we really don’t need great investments.

What we need are good investments and the good news is there’s lots of good investments out there.

4) What you DO need is great behavior.

You must be able to take control of your emotions and every time the stock market goes down, there’s no reason to start selling.

Every 1-3 years, the stock market is going to lose 10%. That’s what we call a correction. Every 3-5 years, the stock market is going to lose 20%. We refer to that as a bear market. And every 5-12 years, the wheels fall off the wagon and that’s a crash. Every time, the market has always come back and gone on to new highs

Time and patience are what’s going to win the day. It’s just a matter of not listening to that voice in your head that says sell every time the stock market goes down.



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