Do you have one? A study found that one-third of Americans over 50 noted their biggest retirement planning regret was not having a lifetime income source. Most of us engage in employment and businesses to have just that. Hence, our lives literally depend on our jobs and businesses. Being let go or being forced to close shop is life-shattering because without that monthly income, everything is disrupted – our mortgage, car loan, school fees, gym membership, planned holidays, medical treatment, everything. We just cannot think of our lives without the jobs we do or businesses we run. It shouldn’t be that way and doesn’t need to be.
Most of what some of us do is buy a home for ourselves and as an extension of that, buy one or two more properties as investments for rental income. Many of us in employments also have private pension enrolled by our employers where we do some allocation to mutual funds. So, with all of that, are we ready to live the life of our dreams and not have a worry if our work life ended today? Not really. What do we do with the income we generate and keep accumulating or spending as life goes on? The only way to build that lifetime income source is by investing in the world, the economies and markets all around us.
We work in companies, buy from them for our businesses, consume goods and services from brands and companies, take services from governments, pay taxes, apply for loans and mortgages, so is it not natural to invest in them and the world around us? It is definite that the world will go on without us, so to have more faith in keeping our cash with ourselves or in our accounts (or limiting ourselves to 1 or 2 properties that we can physically see and control) instead of investing in everything else around is just not sensible.
It is perplexing why investing is still seen as only a choice or an option by many (well, more on this in a separate post).The more invested we are in our world, the more will we grow with it because the world will keep on progressing and growing, with or without us. This applies financially and economically which is the focus here, but it also applies philosophically and to our lives as a whole.
Legendary mathematician and investor James Simons with a net worth of almost $ 30 billion passed away at 86 on Friday. You can learn more about him and investing in the book, “The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution”. We are not suggesting that you should become a quant investor straight away or ever in the future, but you can start your journey into investing there to eventually start building that lifetime income source through a foundation investment portfolio.