Monday, October 8, 2018
howeenterprise.com
Should I dive in now on retirement savings?
Taylor Kovar
Hey Taylor - I know I should start saving for retirement sooner than later. My question is, should I dive in ASAP or spend a couple years saving and learning about the different accounts available?
Hey Dwight - Start now! Your question is valid, and you should always read up on your investment options to decide which makes the most sense. However, you can’t replace time, and the more time you give your money, the more work it will do on its own. The best thing your retirement account will do is earn money by snowballing. If your 401(k) or IRA didn’t produce returns and compound interest, you’d be better off burying cash in your backyard. As it is, even though the total amount in your account will fluctuate, the earnings always have the capacity to produce more than what you put in.
doesn’t compound and grow, you’re back to wishing you’d buried money in the yard. Fortunately, there are a lot of options for stable investments. You can open an IRA online through Betterment with minimal fees and above-average returns. There are plenty of other online providers with fairly good rates. Read reviews, talk to friends, don’t go in totally blind, and you’ll be making good use of your money. Remember you can always adjust your account or move your money later on. There are penalties for closing accounts and withdrawing funds, but if you move an IRA or a 401(k) from one bank to another, you won’t get hit with a big fee. The fear of not understanding your investment, while valid, should not stop you from putting money into a retirement account ASAP.
A final point: you aren’t going to really learn about investing until you start. If your goal is to know exactly how retirement accounts work, you need to have money in one so you can watch the market in action. Postponing your contributions will not help your mission to learn, it will do the The goal is to get your account to opposite. a threshold where the annual Contribute early and often, returns created by the money Dwight. You’ll get educated as you’ve already invested will you go, and you’ll give your outweigh your annual contributions. You can put $5,500 money the best chance to grow. into an IRA each year, and if you do that every year for a couple Taylor Kovar - Family Man. decades, the money generated by Wealth Manager. Author. your account will eventually go Speaker. Serial Entrepreneur. well above $5,500 annually. Travel Lover. Chick-Fil-A Fanatic. Kovar is the CEO and Your hangup is understandable; founder of Kovar Capital you don’t want to invest money Management LLC of Lufkin, each year into an account you Texas. don’t understand. If the money
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Living with children PARENTING REALITY, PART ONE: It is all but inevitable that after rattling off a list of provocative, sociopathic stuff his or her child is doing and usually has been doing for John Rosemond quite some time, a parent will say, “But he’s a really good kid.” How’s that? How is it that a child who is belligerently defiant, denigrates the parent with various libelous descriptors, refuses to be the least bit responsible around the home, and creates nearly constant uproar in the family is “really a good kid”? I have a theory. Today’s parents tend to believe in parenting determinism; that, in other words, parenting produces the person. The belief is understandable, given that the mental health community has been spreading it for over a century, ever since it was originally proposed by Sigmund Freud, the so-called Father of Modern Psychology. It’s why psychologists – no matter the nature of the presenting problem – ask, “Tell me about your childhood” as if the way a person was raised, or (more accurately) claims to have been raised, explains everything.
PARENTING REALITY, PART TWO: Contrary to what even most psychologists believe, no one has ever conclusively proven that behavior modification – which obviously works on dogs and other animals – works with any significant degree of reliability on human beings. It is important to note that the “no one” in the preceding sentence includes B. F. Skinner, the psychology professor and researcher who first articulated the theory. Nonetheless, the notion that successful discipline is largely a matter of manipulating consequences (i.e., reward and punishment) properly is almost universally held. Thus, when parents describe a discipline problem to me, they want to know WHAT I think they should do. They expect me to describe a method, technique, or strategy that they haven’t already thought of. I call these methods, etc., “consequence delivery systems.” The PARENTING REALITY here is that more important than WHAT one does in response to a child’s persistent misbehavior is the WAY in which it – whatever “it” might be – is done.
Said differently, no method, technique, strategy or consequence is going to work for long (if it works at all) unless it is delivered by a parent who is unequivocally convinced of the legitimacy of his/her authority over said child. A right attitude is Given the ubiquity of that belief – more important than a right which, by the way, is not corroborated by either research or a consequence. With a right preponderance of anecdote – for a attitude, a right presentation, parent to admit the obvious, that her nearly any consequence will work, and keep working. child is a “really bad kid” is to admit, in effect, that she has been a Most parents have already correspondingly defective parent. discovered the truth of this. They “But he’s a really good kid” is a simply refuse to accept the form of self-protective denial. evidence. The PARENTING REALITY here Family psychologist John is that an inability to confront the Rosemond: johnrosemond.com, reality of a child’s misbehavior translates to an inability to respond parentguru.com. effectively, with purposeful, John Rosemond has worked with unruffled authority. Under the families, children, and parents circumstances, the child’s misbehavior gets worse over time, since 1971 in the field of family as does the parent’s confusion. And psychology. In 1971, John earned his masters in psychology from around and around they go. The Western Illinois University and likelihood of one or both parties eventually becoming diagnosed and was elected to the Phi Kappa Phi National Honor Society. being on psychiatric medication increases with every passing day.
Texoma Patriots to meet Wednesday The community of Howe, Van Alstyne, Anna and others are invited to attend the Texoma Patriots upcoming meeting. This month's meeting is a "Meet and Greet the Grayson County GOP Candidates" and will take place Wednesday, October 10, at 7 p.m. at Buck Snort BBQ, 224 E. Jefferson St. in Van Alstyne. The Texoma Patriots welcome you to come meet the candidates on Wednesday. Get to know the GOP candidates who are on the November 6 ballot. This is your opportunity to ask them about local
and/or state issues that are important to you. Learn about their concerns for our community. The following candidates have replied and are attending: Pat Fallon, for Texas Senate District 30. Reggie Smith, for TX House of Representatives District 62. Brett Smith, for Grayson County District Attorney. Bart Lawrence, for County
Commissioner Precinct 4. Damon Vannoy, for Justice of the Peace Precinct 3. Also attending are Grayson County Judge Bill Magers, County Treasurer Gayla Hawkins, and District Judge, 59th Judicial District Larry Phillip. These three candidates are unopposed. They invite you to come early and eat before the meeting. Jim Smith's tasty barbecue buffet will open at 5 pm. There is not charge to attend the event.
