Cash Cow. Moooo.

Andrew Answers / 18 Dec 2012 / Personal Finance

So listen. You know that I am getting more excited by the moment about my tiny, yet growing CASH COW that I guess people call a 401(k). I think of it as a CASH COW. Is that milk? Nope. It’s cash.

There’s this thing called a payroll deduction IRA (acronym translator: Individual Retirement Account).

“Heh,” you say?

You probably didn’t say that. But I did.

So, here’s the deal. I want it. It’s a tiny supplemental thing that I can have alongside my 401(k) plan. Now, I have heard “IRA” thrown around in circles of friends, potentially a family member here and there.

“Yeah, I just set up an IRA through my bank blah, blah,” or, “I rolled this thing over into this IRA thing blah, blah,” and so on.

In fact, one of my best friends in the world—who is a professional bartender—waddled into her bank and set one up about two months ago. She takes in all of her $10 bills.

Cool story, and a brief aside.

If she gets a $10 bill, it goes into savings. She doesn’t allow herself to spend a $10 bill. Consequently, she is putting an EPIC amount of cash in her IRA, certainly for her income (think that the maximum is $6K for contributions if you are under retirement age, and think that she makes minimum wage). And it’s a great start for her, because like me… she’s starting at ground zero. And trust—girl is putting in her max of $6K. How does she live?

Well, the simple answer is, she is smarter than me.

And I want to make something totally clear: I am thankful for her teaching me something about saving. She took the bull by the horns (poor bull didn’t see it coming) and decided that she was going to own her future. Despite the fact that there is no ability for her to save at work, she still saw a need for it and took the initiative to do it herself. She created her own destiny and look at her now. She probably has more in her retirement account than me. BIG SURPRISE. < Not at all.

And now. For a series of action sequences!

I challenge all of YOU to a throw down on the subject of IRAs! Do it! Do it now!

What do you know about them? Do you have one? What else do you have? Share! Remember what we learned in grade school about sharing?

Wrapping up. No, seriously.

I said I was going to keep it short, didn’t I? I LIED. Wow. Writers are not to be trusted. We get so excited—kind of like a herd of over-anxious puppies with a new toy (Yep! Herd is the new pack, my friends).