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Strategies & Market Trends : Dividend investing for retirement -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: deeno who wrote (15048)	3/30/2013 5:22:04 PM
From: Steve Felix	5 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 34328

"If the only thing a person has is a 401k that should be telling you something." Other than possibly they weren't born with a silver spoon in their mouth, exactly what? Still with you on the concept, but what bearing this statement has on the situation alludes me. The wife and I married in 1975. Settled for a house two weeks previous. I got my first job with a 401k match in 1976. I put in just enough to get the match, and took every dollar we had to the bank each month to pay off the 8 1/2% mortgage. Could have invested the money, but took the sure 8 1/2%. Immediately on paying off the house, I took every dollar we had to the bank each month, saving for a down payment on land. The 16 acres came with a 9.25% loan. Again, I could have invested the money, but as the goal was to build a house where I wanted to spend the rest of my time, I paid the loan off as quick as possible. As soon as that was done, I took every cent we had to the bank every week until we had 10k, then borrowed 45k @ 8.25%, sold the old house, and built my own house. Three years later, the wife went back to work and we were debt free, including a new car, a year later. During this time, my wife took ten years off work while raising my daughters, and we did Disney twice. Priceless! All this time I only contributed enough to get the company match. I did however save a tremendous amount in interest charges, and didn't farm out my kids to someone else. Which part shows I couldn't have done as well investing as my 401k?