I was combing through today’s spam when a CNN/Money Ask the Expert article caught my eye. Usually I ignore them, given that they can often contain some pretty lousy advice, but the headline “When 401(k)s and IRAs are not enough” caught my eye.
My first reaction upon reading about Norm was “how much do you make that you can afford to max out your contributions to both investment options?” My second was, “what kind of life do you lead that you would want to?”
Not that I am all grasshoper and no ant, but if you’re saving that much in a regular job, you have to be missing out on some things in life. The saddest thing that could happen to Norm is that he never makes it to retirement. The idea of funding my retirement accounts to their max I find crazy only because there’s a fairly decent chance I won’t make it, and that I won’t really be able to enjoy it. If Norm is saving for retirement at the expense of the present, that’s just as much a shame as not saving for retirement.