Tips for People Starting to Save Later in Life

Starting to save later in life doesn’t mean you have to save everything at once. Brenda Hiscock explains why starting small can be more effective.

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Starting to save late, you really have to think things through because people wanna go from 0 to 100 when they’re haven’t done enough, and that usually results in failure.

And so when I have people approaching me about starting late, it’s like, let’s start small. And, like, personally, what I did is I just started prioritizing which buckets to fill.

Right.

And then starting to fill them with small amounts. And I still to this day just incrementally keep increasing my automated deposits.

That’s good. I love to hear get bigger and bigger, and that allowed me to ease into it.

And I realized, “Oh, I can save that much. Let me try this much more and this much more.” And just really it’s worked so well for me and has really, you know, had me be able to come quite a long way in, in a relatively short period of time.

You know, that’s all interesting and, and very similar to trying to get in good physical shape, that the people who go absolutely crazy out of the gate and cut their calories back to 1,000 a day and work out two hours, you can’t sustain it. You can’t keep with it, and it can often have negative health impacts.

But by easing into it, being realistic and focusing long term, it sounds like you’re on the right path and have done good things. Before we went on air, you said something very basic but so true, and I have said it in many interviews: When you start late, you have to work longer, and that’s basic arithmetic.

And I mean, you’re right. Generally, there’s always the exception for somebody who’s hit a spectacular success investing or made huge money late in life. But for the most part, if you get the saving going in your 40s and 50s, that means you’re gonna have to delay retirement until some point in your mid to late 60s.

That’s just, again, basic arithmetic.

Well, I think the other thing to think about is that sometimes we might not be able to work until we’re 70, so we have to have backup plans. So for example, you know, if I was forced to stop working in the next few years, then, you know, one of my backup plans would be to move abroad and retire abroad where I can live a nice lifestyle at a much lower cost of living.

And so sort of, you know, uh, I think that when you’re starting to save late, you need to have multiple scenarios because you can’t be sure how long you can work. So you also have to understand what will happen if you can’t work as long as you want to.