Hi! My name is Tony. I am married in my Mid- 40’s and the father of 3 kids. I have worked in the financial industry for over 12 years as a Stock Broker/ Financial Planner and finally left disappointed. As an insider, I saw and experienced what the real focus is, and it is not you or me, the client – do not believe the advertising! The entire and only priority is about increasing the firm’s Assets Under Management (AUM). The more money you invest with the firm, the more they make in fees.

Stock Brokers also call themselves Financial Planners; it is sexier, but at their core, they are salespeople. This is hard for most people to understand. Most people believe that their stockbroker is spending the majority of his/her time watching their investments. In reality, a stockbroker spends almost 80% of their time prospecting for new clients. This means only 20% of the time is spent watching the markets and/or the client’s investments! This also explains why we are seeing the ETF boom in the last decade, and it is not for the reason they tell you in the ads!

I will be sharing everything I learned during my more than a decade in the financial industry in this blog. I will share where I find the tools and reports that I use today and how I am creating our retirement income stream that does not depend on selling off parts of our nest egg.

I find that for my generation (those of us in our 40’s and 50’s), when we begin thinking of our upcoming retirement, we realize that we might not be as prepared as we think we are! Some of us might bury our head in the sand; others, myself included, decide instead to begin organizing and getting a handle on our household finances.

Probably like you, we put off having kids so that we could focus on our careers. We now realize that we will be approaching retirement when our kids will be attending college!

My first thoughts were:

• How do we pay for college? (We have 3 kids!!)
• Will we still be able to retire? (or work until we die!)

Maybe, you are one of the lucky few that began saving and investing in your 20’s. You maxed out your 401k every year, as well as your IRA/Roth IRA and any other retirement plan that was available to you. Congratulations! You are the exception! Keep doing what you are doing if this is you!

Many of us did not follow this path of maxing out retirement accounts. Now we feel that we have to scramble to get our finances in order. We are told that we have to increase the amount of money we are putting away towards retirement. Ever wonder why? This leads to an increase in Assets Under Management for the financial planner, which equals more money they charge in fees. My question has always been – how do we put away 50% of our income towards retirement with 3 kids getting ready to go to college?

One main advantage we have is that with age comes experience. The purpose of this blog is to share with everyone my experience. As a family, what we are doing to get our households’ finances in order and ready for our approaching retirement 20 years from now. It is not as daunting as they might make you believe! Don’t forget to sign-up below to receive our emails about the new articles we publish, all intended to help you get your financial “ducks in a row.”.