Secrets to Financial Success: The Power of a Written Plan

Let me get this straight. You're going to spend 60 years as an investor, 30 years while you're working, 30 years while you're retiring. The biggest financial task of your life is acquiring a nest egg big enough to support you after you're done working that can support you the rest of your life. You know, 20% ish plus of your income is going to go towards saving for retirement. And it's too much work to write down a page or two of your financial plan. That's too much work, really. That's what you're trying to avoid is doing a couple pages of writing. You must really hate writing. I think there's two benefits to writing it down. The first one is as you write it, it exposes the holes in your knowledge. It exposes the gaps in your thinking. Benefit number two is a commitment. Right. I'm actually going to spend some time to write this down, but I think this is a really useful exercise for people to have a written financial plan.