If you want to live comfortably in retirement we’ve been told that we will need around a million dollars, not including our family home.
That’s a huge amount of money for most people to acquire and it challenges us to consider just how we can achieve that million dollar goal.
One way is to invest in property but it really takes a comprehensive strategy to ensure that you hit the mark.
Most people start out with good intentions when it comes to property investing. For example, they buy a property and the intention is to use the equity from the first property to fund the deposit for the next property in the near future.
That’s a good plan but it takes discipline for most to stick to the original strategy and keep building a portfolio.
As we know, property takes around 7 – 10 years to double in value and some may take longer so it’s really a measure of discipline and patience that’s required to hold property for the long term. Preferably, it’s best to hold property for even longer if possible.
Investing needs to become a part of your lifestyle, as natural as say, taking a holiday. It’s a great idea to start investing as soon as you have full time income so that your life is geared to earning an income and investing some of it for the future. The enormous benefit of this will be found in the compounding effect of the money invested over time.
However, there are usually several “life” challenges throughout the 20+ year time frame of building that portfolio, such as finding a partner, starting and raising a family, buying your own home and building a career.
All of these life experiences cost a great deal of money and for many people, property investing takes a ‘back seat’ until such time as they can afford to continue investing.
So the message is most emphatically, “stay the course” when it comes to investing and as you are able to add another property to the portfolio, do so.
The truth is, there’s no real way of ascertaining how many investment properties will be needed to fund a comfortable retirement so it makes sense to continue building your portfolio. That way you will have many options for the future.
