Why Am I Interested In Personal Finance?

At the beginning of my career, like most of us, I didn’t think about retirement planning. I never really paid attention to my retirement account contributions or the fees I was paying. We didn’t know how much our family was spending or how much we needed to save. I just knew that I wanted to get on the big red truck and do my job.

My Eye Opener

Around the spring of 2008, I happened to do a little reading (too little reading, as it turns out) on retirement planning and personal finance. I decided that opening a Roth IRA was right for me.* What I didn’t know then was that the US had started down the path to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. I used part of the money my wife and I had in savings to open an IRA. Over the next few months, I watched it lose half its value.

The image above shows our investment returns for a year after I opened the account. Ouch. To add insult to injury, I got scared and didn’t end up putting any more money in my IRA until late 2010, long after the market had hit bottom and started climbing again. I had bought at the peak, and didn’t know enough to continue buying when the market was down. My only saving grace is that I didn’t sell at the bottom, and so my losses only existed on paper.

Our Retirement Planning

During that roller coaster ride, I realized that I didn’t know what I was doing when it came to money. I needed to figure it out. Since then, I have become very interested in personal finances and retirement planning. I developed a financial plan for my family, began looking at our spending, dug into our retirement accounts to understand the fees, and changed our funds and asset allocations. We started a college fund, bought an investment property, and started saving a lot more. Our credit cards get paid off every month (if we use them), and we carry no debt other than our mortgages. We have over 6 months of expenses in our emergency fund. If we follow our plan, we’ll have a comfortable retirement and won’t have to worry about money.

I Want To Pass It On

I read about personal finance every day, either online, in magazines, or in books. There is a ton of information out there from a lot of different sources. Telling the difference between the folks who are trying to sell you something and those who are actually being helpful can be difficult. I have learned a tremendous amount on the subject, and want to pass it on to you. I have nothing to sell you. I’m just a firefighter trying to help others like me live comfortably and have a secure retirement. Dive in to learn more about retirement planning and how you can take control of your finances.

*I still believe that, and contribute to mine religiously – more on that in another post