7 Money Goals To Achieve in Your 40s

Guys, in our fifties is the time when most of us are preparing for retirement and want to be able to possibly not work again. But before we get to that point, there's some things we got to do. Now I'm going to give you seven important goals that you want to achieve in your forties so that you can chill and relax in your fifties. So guys, the first thing you want to achieve in your forties is making sure you're on top of this game called net worth. According to the Federal Reserve's most recent survey of consumer finances, the average net worth for someone between ages 45 and 54 is right around $975,000. That's the average. Now listen, don't get upset about that. The average is always skewed up a little bit by the people who make the most. So the better figure would actually be the median net worth of people between the ages of 45 and 54. The median net worth is right around $246,000. In your forties, the goal is to try to get your net worth around the median net worth and above. Anything up and above the median net worth of $246,000 is great. But the whole point of the exercise of figuring your net worth, I would say two to three times a year is so that you're putting a focus on the assets and you're putting a focus on lowering the liabilities, which we'll talk about in a bit. What you focus on tends to grow. So if you focus on your net worth, guess what? Your assets are going to start growing. Your liabilities will start going down. Now the second money goal that you want to achieve in your forties is to pay off your debt as soon as possible. Pay off all the debt on things going down in value. If it's going down in value, get rid of it. You don't need it. And I say that because I want you to do that before you reach your fifties. If you can get out of all bad debt in your forties before you reach age 50, you're doing better than most and you're doing a great job. Look, I don't care. I don't care if you use the debt snowball method, the debt avalanche method. It doesn't matter. Just do what you can to get out of that debt as soon as possible for good and not go back into the bad debt. Be done with it. Why? Because nobody wants to enter into their fifties and sixties and seventies with a whole bunch of debt. In fact, guys, the fact that people have debt is one of the reasons that keep a lot of people working and working until they're 65 and 75 and 85 years old. It's not the only reason, right? If you want to work till you're that old, that's cool, but you don't want to have to work until you're that old. You want to have the choice to be able to say, nah, I'm done. Forget it. No more. And you do that by making sure you have no debt on things, especially things going down in value. It's going to be less stressful and it's going to give you more freedom. And you know what? It'll give you more of the ability to just be done and leave whenever you want to leave on your terms, right? That's freedom. Now, the third money goal you want to achieve in your forties is you want to have a strong financial foundation in your forties as you go into your fifties. It's like building a house, like the house behind me, the most valuable thing that's a part of that house behind me. The most absolutely most costly and valuable thing is the foundation. If the foundation is messed up, the house is messed up. If the foundation is lousy, the house is lousy. I don't care what type of beautiful walls and paint job and all that good stuff. Don't matter if the foundation is messed up. Same thing applies to your money. If your money, if your foundation of your personal finances is horrible, then everything else don't matter. So before you get to your fifties, this is number three. You got to have a strong, solid financial foundation built up because look, when you get to be 40 years old, you're actually entering in what I call the third quarter of life, right? That's between the ages of 40 and 60. And like any game that goes four quarters, guys, you got to start that third quarter strong. That means making sure your financial foundation is rock solid. How do you do that? Written goals. Make sure you write down what you want and you have a plan for your financial life. Short term, long term. It means being in control of you, yourself, being able to tell yourself no. It means doing monthly budgets on a regular basis that are written down that you follow. Zero based budgets that you follow to a T and you stick to it. You begin to have that discipline that you need as you go into your fifties and ultimately into your sixties. You might as well start developing that discipline to build that strong foundation in your forties. It also means making sure you have various sources of income that are coming in, not just that one job because that's risky. You want to have various sources of stable income that you can rely on and having a strong financial foundation with your money. It means that you are cured of the following the Joneses or the emphasis on stuff and trying to have the latest this and the latest that. You got to sort of grow out of all that in order to build a strong foundation with your personal finances. That means maturity with your money, with your choices and decisions with money and with how you look at life and being grounded with your money and not trying to just follow the Joneses and do what everybody else do and comparing yourself to other people and spending because other people are spreading. You got to get all that sort of financial immaturity out of your life. You got to get organized with your money, do the basics with your money and remove those stressors from your money. Now, the fourth money goal that you need to achieve in your forties is stretching yourself, you know, maximizing your retirement savings. Look, by your forties, it's very, very important that you take retirement very serious. You're willing at this point to sacrifice some things if you've got to sacrifice them. That means maybe not going on the vacation, maybe doing something a little bit less and making sure you're investing more and that you're actually maximizing your retirement savings. Be it a traditional IRA, your 401k at your job, your Roth IRA at the lease, be maximizing the Roth because there's limits on those contributions. Obviously, take an advantage of employer matches, catch up contributions and all of the things you can do to be putting aside as much money as possible in your forties so that you solid in your fifties. Well, listen, if you're watching this video and you're in your twenties, you need to be doing these things. And if you're in your thirties, you should be doing them. But especially by the time you get to be in your forties, you've got to be doing these things before you reach age 50. Now, the fifth thing that you need to achieve in your forties is an estate plan. And if you already have one, you should be updating it in your forties to match your current financial situation. And if you don't have one, you need to establish one before you go into your fifties, right? Now's the time to update your will, create a trust, assign POAs, power of attorneys, healthcare directives, whatever you want to call it, and make sure you have proper life insurance as well. These are the steps that's going to protect your loved ones. If something happens to you, protect the people you care about the most by making sure that if something happens to you, they're taken care of financially because you thought enough about them to get an estate plan established, written up, and done. And done the right way. Look, you can do it online, get a will online and all that good stuff. But I suggest you find you a good solid attorney in your area, in your state, if you're in America and get you a estate plan completed. And then every few years, two or three years, revisit that thing. Because look, the fact is this, the older you get, the greater the chances that you won't be here tomorrow. And if the chances increase every single day that you won't be here the next day, then you need to be preparing for that. You don't have to wait till you're 55 or 60 years old to do an estate plan. You can do it in your thirties. You can do it in your forties. Just get it done before you reach age 50. Now, the sixth money goal that you need to achieve in your forties is proper diversification and proper allocation of all of your investments. To make sure that as things change in your life and your risk tolerance changes here and there, that you have proper diversification, meaning that you don't have one stock that is 50% of your investment portfolio. You don't have two stocks that make up 75% of all the money that you have invested. That's not properly balanced, right? You want to allocate your money. How much in growth stocks or how much in growth ETFs or how much do you have in value ETFs or how much do you have in bonds? You want to make sure it's spread around and not all stuck in one or two different stocks. You want to have much more diversity than that, right? In case cryptocurrency goes down, you don't have 90% of your money sitting in crypto and you're done, right? You have no more money because you put it all on crypto or you have no more money because you put it all on this one stock, right? Don't do that. Make sure in your 40s that you know how to diversify and you know how to allocate. What is the percentage or allocation in real estate? What is the percentage or allocation in stocks? What is the percentage or allocation amount in bonds? Whatever it may be, just make sure that it's allocated appropriately and in line with your core beliefs, your plans, your goals, and your risk tolerance level. Now, the seventh money goal that you need to achieve in your 40s is planning for your future healthcare. Now, look, you may be saying to yourself, man, 40 years old, 45 years old, that's pretty early. But listen, guys, you never know, right? There's disabilities, there's accidents, there's all different types of things that can happen to you when you get a little bit older. Again, remember, the older you get, the closer you get to losing your health or having something go wrong or actually to not be in here anymore, right? So you want to make sure that healthcare cost is something that's on your mind, you're thinking about and planning for down the road. Look, one of the things that keeps a lot of people working is healthcare, right? And in America, we know healthcare is very, very expensive. So what is your plans for healthcare when you want to retire when you're 55 or when you're 60? See, a lot of people don't think about healthcare until it's too late. They don't think about healthcare until they're a year from retiring and then trying to figure out what they're going to do. What I'm telling you is plan ahead of time because healthcare cost, it goes up the older you get and it goes up because the more problems you're more susceptible to having because you're getting older. So why not start thinking about that as soon as possible? Maybe you can consider contributing to a health savings account or HSA, right? If you have a high deductible plan, you can always put money towards an HSA, right? It can give you some tax benefits and it can also help you in your retirement years. And you also maybe want to think about not just healthcare, but what about long-term care insurance? Now, I'm not telling you to go get long-term care insurance at the age of 40, but I am telling you to be thinking about these things and planning for these things along the way and putting things in place today so that your healthcare expenses can be minimized 15 years from now, 10 years from now. That's all about planning because again, the one area that people that are over the age of 50, 55, 60 that they complain about the most is healthcare and the cost of healthcare. So why not start planning for it and thinking about it in your 40s? So there you have it, guys. That's the seven money goals you want to achieve while you're in your 40s before you get to age 50. So you're strengthening your financial foundation, you're securing your financial future, and you're making sure you got money for generations to come down the road when you're no longer here. So you have more money, less stress, and a higher quality of life. I'll holler at you in the next video. Peace.