Weekend Reading: Big Financial Questions? Step Away from the Spreadsheet
This article appears as part of Casey Weade's Weekend Reading for Retirees series. Every Friday, Casey highlights four hand-picked articles on trending retirement topics and delivers them straight to your email inbox. Get on the list here.
Weekend Reading
If you’re a data-driven individual like myself, you might find greater financial peace of mind when presented with real-time numbers on a spreadsheet. However, it’s also important to know not all big picture decisions regarding your retirement and financial wellbeing should depend solely on stats.
READ THE ARTICLESeveral of those instances mentioned here might include:
📌Whether and when to retire: Reaching that “Job Optional” lifestyle requires introspection of your purpose, meaning and passions, in addition to ensuring you’re financially on track before stepping into retirement
📌 Whether to pay off a mortgage: While today’s low interest rates don’t equate the return on investment of a mortgage pay-down as very high in comparison to other investments, it does provide peace of mind, which for some, is priceless
📌 Whether to change jobs: Open positions are affluent at the moment, which provides potential employees bargaining power and the ability to weigh multiple job offers; however, in addition to considering salary and benefits, you should also keep in mind where you will feel happiest and find opportunities for growth
📌 Where to live: Cost of living and taxes should certainly factor into your decision of where to reside, but more importantly, think about other aspects such as relationships, cultural affinity, healthcare access and activities you will enjoy
Fulfillment over fractions: You may have been told to simply extract emotion out of your financial decisions and act on the numbers, but do the numbers really matter if they don’t make you happy and/or aren’t in line with where you find purpose and meaning in life?