Planning for Retirement

When individuals earn money, their first responsibility is to pay current expenses such as rent or mortgage and food. Once these expenses have been covered, the next step should be to fund a retirement plan.

How much difference will funding a vehicle such as a Roth IRA early on in l...

• Time is on your side.  The earlier you start saving money, the more time you give compounding to work for you. 
• Take risks when you're young.  Although stocks are three times more volatile than government bonds, it earns nearly twice the average annual return.

Based on a series of papers known as the Trinity Studies, you need to save 25-30 times your expected annual expenses to have enough money to last you for the rest of your life.

This multiple is based on the percentage of your investment growth that you would be able to wit...