Diane Neill Jensen

Posts Tagged ‘financial retirement planning’

It’s true. The more we have, the more we want, whether it’s in making money ideas or financial retirement planning, unless we know how to break that cycle.

A few years back, my husband and I each had our own “clunker” to drive. He, a car, I, a little pick-up truck.

One day, the steering wheel came off in his hands when we were driving to town. That was just the start of our car buying.

We decided to trade the car in instead of getting it fixed. We got the nicest red truck with a bench seat for hauling grandkids around in. We just loved it. The payments were around two hundred dollars a month.

Then, one of our kids came home to live and we went from a two person household to seven overnight.

They didn’t have a car, and after juggling who got to go to town with us for grocery shopping for a few months, and listening up close and personal to the little ones loudly entertaining themselves in the back seat, we went to the car dealer to “just look around”.

Of course, we bought a “new” used vehicle, but what a deal it was. It was a eight passenger Chevy SUV. What a wonder it was. It made me feel so good, sitting up high off the highway, looking back, waay back, at the little ones in the far rear seat. Peaceful. The monthly payments on this vehicle were about three hundred a month.

Then, while my husband and I were on a trip in Canada to a Lions International Convention, we got hit head on while returning home. The wonderful deal, my dream car, was totaled. Fortunately, we all walked (limped) away without much permanent health damage.

There we were, with nothing to drive. We couldn’t find any good deals like we had with our previous two used car purchases.

In order to have something to drive, the dealership worked with us and gave us a good deal on a brand new car, albeit a much smaller car. That took some getting used to for me. I liked the big truck and the big suv.

Now our car payments were about five hundred dollars. More than our house payment.

As soon as our insurance company settled with us, we paid off the car and I swear never to have to deal with car payments again.

We again have an additional five kids and grandkids living with us, but we’re not getting a bigger car. We have wheels, it’s all we really need. We certainly don’t need any more high car payments.

The more we have the more we want.

This book demonstrates some of the findings in the new field of “behavioral economics”.

Humans make relative judgments, says Dan Ariely in his book “Predictably Irrational”.

The good news is, because of the predictability of our irrational decisions, as soon as we learn what we are doing that is irrational in our decision making, we can break these habits, he says.

You can get ahead in this life and I can help.

If you want to learn more about where my training is coming from, leave your name and email address in the box on this page or at http://DianeNeillJensen.com

I hope to hear from you soon.

My husband and I had been waiting a long time to get a flat screen television set. It is on our list of items we want to purchase thanks to our owning one of the best home businesses, and we wanted it before we retire, it is part of our financial retirement planning goals.

The thing that appealed to me the most is that flat screen tv’s take up less room than our old heavy, bulky television set.

My husband liked the larger viewing size of the flat screen, even in the same 32” size, the flat screen could been seen from a side angle, but the old tv you could not.

We wanted to get the best price possible, so we waited and waited. Finally, a model was advertised in the size we wanted and at a much lower price than usual. Three hundred and ninety-nine dollars, and if we purchased on a Tuesday, another 10% off that.

“In a series of illuminating, often surprising experiments, MIT behavioral economist Dan Ariely refutes the common assumption that we behave in fundamentally rational ways. Blending everyday experience with groundbreaking research, Ariely explains how expectations, emotions, social norms and other invisible seemingly illogical forces skew our reasoning abilities”… Harper Collins publishers.

We went to two different stores in the same chain of stores that Tuesday and they were both out of the sale item, but we were tired of waiting.

We looked at several models in the size we wanted. Three models were $499., another was $599. We looked at the less expensive ones and there didn’t seem to be any difference, except for one model was marked down a lot more than the other two.

We decided on the one that was marked down more, even though we did not notice any discernable differences in the picture quality or features.

Our author says that, in the relatively new field of study “behavioral economics” or “judgment and decision making” (JDM), we compare items to decide which one we want, and that we compare the relativity of the price to the item in savings.

This real life example demonstrates a few points that are explained in Chapter One of Dan Ariel’s “Predictably Irrational”.

In the next post, we will learn another point or two that he makes.

You can get ahead in this life and I can help.

If you want to learn more about where my training is coming from, leave your name and email address in the box on this page or at http://DianeNeillJensen.com

I hope to hear from you soon.

What if I could learn a psychological principal and use it to figure out how to move forward with my financial life planning, or more accurately in my case, my financial retirement planning.

I am not alone in worrying about how they are going to get along financially in my retirement years.

“A new study released by Bankrate finds that more and more Americans are concerned about their retirement prospects. The poll, conducted by GfK Roper, finds that retirement is a growing concern amid tumultuous financial times for Americans,” says Consumer Affairs* on June 23, 2008.

Key findings include:

• Only 28 percent say that they will be able to retire comfortably. One-third (33 percent) say they’ll have just enough finances to get by when retired.

• Seven out of 10 say that they have set low expectations about their retirement prospects.

• Nearly two out of 10 (17 percent) say they will not have enough money to retire without worrying.

• Nineteen percent say they are afraid they’ll never be able to retire.

Taking my making money ideas and partnering with a corporation that has this much training is my holy grail. My ticket to the train to making more money for financial retirement income.

One thing learned this past few months is that learning from books is more thorough if the reading is combined with writing about what is in the books.

Also, publishing all this writing on the internet in my blog could help others.

Reading the book “Predictably Irrational” by Dan Ariely is a book based on the new psychology of just what the title says.

Publishing a post each day as I read this book will help us figure out, according to Dan, how to improve our decision making and change the way we live for the better.

I hope to translate the information learned into ways to accelerate how to get to retirement with enough income to enjoy those years.

Come along with me as we look at what this author has to say.

You can get ahead in this life and I can help.

If you want to learn more about where my training is coming from, leave your name and email address in the box on this page or at http://DianeNeillJensen.com

I hope to hear from you soon.
*http://consumeraffairs.com

Why are the areas studied in “The Slight Edge” so important in your life?

Making money ideas which lead to your financial retirement planning are now, more than ever, important, considering the number of us entering retirement age in 2011.

“The aging of the population and the retirement of the baby-boom generation are considered by many to be among the most transformative demographic changes ever experienced in this country,” this from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS).

If you can read between the lines, that means lots of people getting to retirement age.

The work of the Health and Retirement Study is managed through a cooperative agreement between the United States National Institute of Aging, which provides primary funding, and the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, which administers and conducts the survey.

Jeff Olson, in chapter eleven of his book includes health as the number one component for your success in addition to personal development, your relationships, and your finances, among others.

In the above mentioned study, the results indicate “a strong correlation between health and wealth”.

In married couples, healthy couples were three times as wealthy as married couples who report their health as poor. Unmarried participants were five times as wealthy.

It just stands to reason, if you trust the study, that using the tiny steps Jeff promotes in his book, that you stand a better chance of being wealthy, if you prioritize being healthy.

Jeff’s teachings give you the information and how to, to get started in your upward curve toward a better life.

My life is already improved, as mentioned in several articles this past month or three.

Get a copy of “The Slight Edge”, and start your journey, too.

You can get ahead in this life and I can help.

If you want to learn more about where my training is coming from, leave your name and email address in the box on this page or at http://DianeNeillJensen.com

I hope to hear from you soon.

You’ve got to have a plan to succeed in this life, and Jeff Olson’s “The Slight Edge” shows you how to get one that will work for you.

Just by doing little things, taking little baby steps each day, you CAN succeed in this life.

These brief articles written for you by me, Diane Neill Jensen, are my pennies for you to take and use. If you got just a fraction of what Jeff’s book is about, well, that’s a start. You’ve taken some baby steps already, by reading five minute articles on Jeff Olson’s plan.

Your next step could be to get your own copy of his book. I got mine from Amazon dot com. Previously in this series, I informed you that I don’t get anything from recommending you purchase Jeff’s book and/or through Amazon dot com.

I have now become an affiliate member of Amazon dot com and will get a small percentage of your purchase price if you go to http://NenanaNewsLink.com and purchase anything through my site.

You can also become an Amazon affiliate by clicking on the link on the Amazon advertisement that says you can get a widget like this one. It will lead you to their site, and if just seven of you become affiliates, I will get a larger percentage from my sales.

It’s not multi-level-marketing. I do not get a percentage of your sales. But it’s ok, I like the idea of earning my own sales and not piggy-backing off “downlines”.

Affiliate memberships are just one way to earn multiple streams of income.

You can get ahead in this life and I can help.

If you want to learn more about where my training is coming from, leave your name and email address in the box on this page.

I hope to hear from you soon.