This is one of my favorite times of year. It’s March Madness season – where the thrill of
victory or the agony of defeat is decided by free throw, a rebound or a blocked
shot. Each year, the 64 68 teams
compete in drama-filled, time compressed pressure cooker of a tournament where
underdogs and Cinderellas come out of nowhere.
What does this have to do with personal finance? Well, there was a nice article in Forbes
recently comparing the amount of time the average person takes to fill out a
bracket versus the amount of time spend on retirement planning.
That article is here.
But March Madness is quick.
We get the results – win or lose – right away over the course of 3
weeks. And it’s on TV! And it’s fun!
I’m not even that big of a fan of basketball, but I am a fan of March
Madness!
But retirement planning isn’t exactly exciting. It’s not immediate – retirement might be 10,
20 or 30 years away. And it’s certainly
not on TV - unless of course you were planning to be on TV during retirement,
but that’s a separate issue.
However, without retirement planning, you could be a
statistic. And the statistics aren’t
pretty. People worrying about running
out of money. People cutting back their
lifestyle because they are worried about running out of money. People working because they have to and not
because they want to. And health
insurance costs never go down, do they?!?!
None of this should be surprise to anybody. Study after study has been done showing these
results.
So the next time you think about your picks, think about
your own stats.
How deep is your
(financial) bench?
Do you have a well
rounded (financial) team?
It may not be that exciting, but I’m sure winning at
retirement ultimately will mean more than winning your office bracket pool.
