The Sooner You Start the Better

Father and son proudly showcase their hard work after completing a successful mulching project in their backyard.

I posted this picture last week on my Facebook page because my son deserves to be bragged about, not to brag about myself, but I'm pretty proud of our boys and the men they are becoming. This picture does not quite do the prior 2 weekends justice though. 15 yards of mulch, 4 hours on Friday (30 minutes with a flashlight at 9 PM), 4 hours on Saturday (post-rain), then 2 hours of grass cutting and 3 more hours of mulch. My 2 older sons, both work and are continuously complemented on for their work and their managers have always held them up high, and I believe wholeheartedly it is because they were taught to work from an early age. Like anything with our kids, work needs to be taught.

No one ever suddenly woke up and thought, oh, I want to work. We are incentivized to work. At a young age, I desired to play golf and my parents told me if I wanted to play, then I had to work and earn money to pay for my golf cart fees. Well, that was enough incentive for me, I put together a flyer and started, weeding, fertilizing, watching dogs, you name it, just to make enough to play golf (I do not recall ever having much more than that).

In order to save, it is important to see a goal. Set up a goal for a house, a new car, or whatever it may be, and start saving. My kids each know the rules, save $5,000 and they have rights to the car to use, until then any car use is limited, to work, school, and sports. That incentive has driven them to save 75% of their paychecks and started them down a good path.

For retirement, we have to think a little bigger, think a little clearer, and sharpen our focus. Dream what your retirement is going to look like, what exactly will you be doing, where will you be going, and what will you be seeing. When you think like that, then you can devise a plan to get there. Only then can you put the right plan in place to start saving for retirement.

It took me till I was in my 40s before I finally thought about retirement for the first time. Thankfully, I had made some smart choices, but I still had some refinement to go. Had I thought about it sooner, I would probably be in an even better position today, but no matter what, start now, don't wait.

Put in the work, work hard, and give it everything you have got across your entire life. While everyone wants to have a "balance" it is not always easy, somedays you are going to have to work a little more, other days you are going to be able to breathe and play a little more, but overall, you can find the right way the drives your success and helps you on a path to your future.

Work hard! Play Hard! AND Have fun doing it all!