Mine is being old and broke; not having a secure retirement. As a freelance writer, I don't have an HR departement to guide me on how/when to invest in the company 401K plan.

 

My retirement depends completely on me -- and how I handle each payment that lands in my PayPal account.

 

So today's newsletter is all about finances, as in, some things you can do to get on track so you don't owe Uncle Sam come tax time; and how to start planning for your future.

 

No matter how old you are, this post will make you think concretely about where you want to be in 20, 30 or 40 years.

 

A decade goes by so fast. And the older I get, the faster it seems to go (I can't believe I've been out of high school for over 25 years!).

 

At 18, you feel like 30 is years away. I mean, where do the years between 18 and 25 go? After 25, you're 30 in the blink of an eye.

 

The decade between 30 and 40 seems to only take a couple of years. Then before you know it, you're staring 50 dead in the eye. 

 

I was talking to a girlfriend the other day -- she's in her early 40s  like me. And she was like, if I had to put a number on it, I'd say I feel like I should only be 32 or 33; for me, I said 28 or 29.

 

That's the way I feel (heck, I'm probably in better shape than I was then); the way I look (I still get carded when I go to buy wine; and kinda the way I act (hey, I'm a kid at heart!).

 

Where the heck did 40-something come from? How did I get here -- and will my money be enough to sustain me if I'm lucky to get to 75, 80 or 85?

 

As we fly through another January, there's no time like the present to start thinking about stuff like this. Here's the link to today's post about all of this: http://bit.ly/dLP7QE.