Ted D. Snow - Retirement Planning QuickStart Guide: The Simplified Beginners Guide to Building Wealth, Creating Long-Term Financial Security, and Preparing for Life After Work

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As in all successful ventures, the foundation of a good retirement is planning.

Earl Nightingale
American author

Whether you are on the verge of retiring or still years away from it, you may have some ideas about what your retirement might look like. Maybe you dream of spending days on the golf course or teaching your grandkids to fish. Perhaps youll tour the world, go back to school, or volunteer in your community. Maybe youre interested in starting a small business or writing your first novel.

Regardless of what you plan to do, youll need financial resources to achieve a secure and sustainable retirement. Youll also need trustworthy information to help you manage those resourcesa commodity that can be hard to come by. Its not that information is unavailable; theres plenty of it out there. Search the internet for just about any financial topic you can think of, and youll find numerous sites offering facts, opinions, and special deals, all geared toward you. The challenge is in separating the reliable information from that which is not trustworthy. While many people heading into retirement rely on advice from a professional financial advisor, others prefer to handle their finances on their own. Wherever you fall on that spectrum, this book will provide information you can trust and rely upon. I have tried to write in a manner that is clear and accessible, and I trust that the content offered will be useful.

Having been a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER practitioner for many years, I have my own opinions about money management, and you will read those opinions as you go through the book. I assure you, however, that the opinions and advice I offer are the same that I would give to my clients and are always geared toward your best interests. I simply want to help you cut through all the chatter and get to the information you need.

Writing this book was especially important to me, and something I realized I needed to do. Its been a journey, and I hope you choose to travel it with me. Let me tell you about myself, my story, and the purpose I have found for my life.

Ever since I was five years old, Ive been intrigued with how money works. I remember going to the Main Street bank in my small hometown of Magna, Utah, to deposit my one-dollar weekly allowance into an old passbook savings account. The day I read the numbers in the passbook and noticed I had saved thirty-five dollars, I thought to myself, Wow! Thats a lot of money!

When I was in sixth grade at Webster Elementary, the school set up a little city called Websterville on the third floor of our school building. There was a general store, a caf, a clothing store, and other businesses, all operated by students who seemed to fit the role of proprietor. I, of course, was chosen to be the banker, depositing the financial gains of other business-minded youngsters and helping my fellow students make withdrawals for the purchase of Laffy Taffy and Blow Pops at the general store.

When we graduated sixth grade to move on to junior high, we were able to cash in our Websterville dollars for real money. As a sign of my future calling, I broke the record for the highest bank account balance Websterville had ever seen. I was extremely excited to cash in my Websterville fortune and claim my real-money reward! Ripping open the envelope that contained my hard-earned profits, I was dismayed to discover that what amounted to two hundred dollars in Websterville money had shrunk to just twenty dollars. It was my first harsh lesson in currency exchange.

Survivors of the Great Depression, my parents instilled in me a spirit of conservation when it comes to spending and saving. Our familys needs were met, but certainly not all our wants. And yet, I was content in the secure love of my parents and the ways they provided for us. My life was simpleplaying basketball and baseball and riding bikes, never thinking about the money we didnt have. With college on the horizon, I started a serious path to saving. At sixteen years of age, working summer construction and stocking shelves, I saved 100 percent of the cost of my associate degree at Snow Junior College, and with my additional savings I pursued my dream of majoring in business and minoring in economics at Utah State. I finished my degree and still had $4,000 in my pocket and no school debt.

Landing my first professional position at Fidelity Investments, my starting salary was a whopping $15,000 a year. Through my time at Fidelity I gained valuable experience in investing and money management, while personally applying my newfound knowledge by maximizing my 401(k) investments every year. With a move to Dallas at age twenty-eight, I saw an increase in salary to $30,000, and my 401(k) portfolio finally reached $100,000. I celebrated with Mexican food and margaritas. Life was good.

Then, in April 1994, our family experienced tragedy with the death of my father. All in one day, my mother lost her husband and his $35,000-a-year pension that provided for her. Because of some poor financial advice from a wealthy friend, my dad unwittingly left my mother in poverty. On his pension paperwork there were two choices: a life only benefit that pays out while the retiree is alive, and a joint-and-survivor payout that would have taken care of my mother following my fathers death. My fathers friend had advised my dad to check the life only pension box, leaving my mother without a pension, and social security as her only source of income.

The stark reality of how many people make ill-informed and financially devastating decisions fueled a passion in me to start my own financial planning practice. I was seventeen years old when my father made a bad decision that resulted in such terrible consequences for my mother. I was thirty when he died, and there was nothing I could do to change my moms situation. From my Dallas Fidelity call center cubicle, I suddenly realized the importance of advising people face-to-face and earnestly counseling clients on a wide breadth of practical and often critical financial decisions, not just the narrow path of investment options and limited advice that Fidelity allowed.

Still haunted by my fathers mistake and its consequences, and firmly motivated to steer my career in a more meaningful and personal direction, I completed my MBA in personal financial planning at the University of Dallas in 1995, and in 1997 I took a leap of faith away from the comforts of my salaried position at Fidelity to start my own practice. Armed with excellent client servicing skills, investing experience, an MBA, a $20,000 severance, and now close to $250,000 in my portfolio, I started as an advisor with Principal Financial Group, with a commission-only income and zero clients. Yet God had a plan for my life.