As young adults we have to start saving for our retirement.  We definitely don`t want to still be working at 70 because we have to.  I know that if I am still working at 70 years old, I hope it is by choice. 

It is important to start saving for retirement when we are young.  I like to compare my personal finances to other parts of my life, and I think that saving for retirement is like eating chocolate.  I enjoy personal finance, as both a personal interest as well as my professional career.  I enjoy eating chocolate both during my personal and professional time.  I deal with personal finance on a daily basis, and I also eat chocolate on a daily basis.

Here are some other ways that saving for retirement is like eating chocolate:

We need to have a little piece at a time. It is important to start investing early, and start investing young.  This allows us to save a little bit over a long period of time. The exact same philosophy is true for eating chocolate.  We don`t want to eat too much at one time. We can eat a little piece of chocolate at lunch and a little piece at dinner; in the end it all adds up to a whole chocolate bar. Saving $50 or $100 for our retirement on a monthly basis will add up to a large amount of money over the long term.

It is something that we should always want. I am not going to lie, I totally love chocolate.  The same is true for my retirement. I can honestly say that I totally want to retire financially stable.  In order to do this I have to save for retirement constantly over the next 25 years if I want to retire at 55.   It is safe to say that my love of chocolate will not fade over the next 25 working years of my life.  I will still be eating chocolate when I retire (hopefully) in 25 years.

Don’t indulge too much. Too much of something, even if it is a good thing, is never a smart idea. I would personally say that I can never eat enough chocolate, but I am sure that my Family Doctor, my Nutritionist, and my Personal Trainer would disagree.  As a Financial Planner I give the same advice to my clients about their investment options.  It is very important to diversify our retirement portfolio.  As we invest for the long term, we can choose different investment options to diversify our retirement portfolio. We don`t want to have only one type of investment for our retirement savings because if that investment crashes we can lose all of our retirement savings.

Stick with your favourites.  This saying is as old as I am (30 years). If it works don’t fix it. If you love chocolate don’t eat something else, if you are craving chocolate don`t eat an apple. If the way we are saving for our retirement is working for us we shouldn`t want to change it.  It doesn`t matter how we save, as long as we are saving for our retirement.  I choose to save through my employer via direct payroll deductions.  This method works for me and I love it. I don`t love it as much as I love chocolate, but I still love saving for my retirement.

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Tahnya Kristina

Tahnya Kristina

Tahnya is 30 years old and lives in Montreal Quebec. She graduated in 2005 from Concordia University, and she currently works for a major International Financial Institution. She recently launched http://www.mediamadam.ca/. You can follow her on Twitter @TahnyaP.