The Investor's Mindset (Introduction)

Getting in the mindset to invest has been a challenging experience. Dealing with the challenges of wanting to keep up with the Jones's, being able to gracefully accept a gain in stock and dealing with the humbling effects of losing half of my total investment (in that very same stock) has caused me experience a roller coaster of emotions. The most important thing to note during this experience is that through each of these times, one goal has remained in my mind:

"Retire comfortably by age 45"

Before investing, I find that one needs to set a goal. Whether it be to purchase your dream home, become a millionaire or just retire earlier than the "status quo", a goal is needed to keep the focus during the times of emotional instability caused by the ups and downs of life. This mindset is taken from the motto, "It's easy as P.I.E."

• Plan
• Implement
• Evaluate

Basically, as long as you "Plan, Implement and Evaluate", you can accomplish whatever you set your mind to. With that said, I have decided in my mind that my goal is to retire comfortably by age 45.

After deciding what your goal is, you must define it. "Reitre comfortably" to me means to be able to have enough money to sustain a lifestyle that is comparable to my life now. Understand at the moment as a 23 year old bachelor, I do not have much responsibility. However, with a wife, children or whatever other responsibility I may have, I want to be able to spend money using my debit card without having to check my bank statement every month and possibly overdrafting my account. With this understanding, I decided to look at my current allocation of funds to all of my expenses and calculated that "comfortable" at age 45 would require me to have at least be 130% of that per year for at least 40 years.

Now although there is little rhyme and reason as to why that number was chosen, it gives me an actual tangible figure that I can set as my goal. To determine how I will reach my goal, I used sites like BankRate.com to calculate different scenarios and figure out how much money I need to save per month in an investment suitable for my goals. In addition to that, I have read books (Investing for Dummies), countless blogs and magazines and have literally surrounded myself with investing and finance. After putting all of this information together, I finally developed an investment plan and have come up with my means to reach my goal.

I will begin to detail my saving strategies as well as provide other information that I find useful in the journey to obtain my financial goals. This blog will also continue to have the notes from each of our meetings and may even have a special guests to contribute their own personal finance goals and means to obtain them. Overall, I hope that you are able to use the information here to assist with obtaining your financial goals. Stay tuned...