3 Unconventional, Lazy Ways For Retirement Planning

By Damon Verial on May 25, 2022

Most people aren’t constantly thinking about money. Most people find the idea of retirement planning to be boring. That’s normal. But let’s rethink this: Have you ever asked yourself, “If I had enough money to do whatever I wanted, what would I do?” In essence, that is retirement. And thinking about that is a lot more entertaining than thinking about retirement planning. And that’s my goal with this article: Making retirement planning fun.

1. Travel

Wait… what? No financial advisor would recommend travel as the first step for planning your retirement. Well, it’s a good thing I’m not a financial advisor.

Here’s the idea: While traveling is going to cost you money, not save you money, it is worth the cost in the long run. And the earlier in life you travel, the better, as you’ll be healthier, have fewer obligations, and it’ll be cheaper.

As for how travel prepares you for your retirement: Travel forces you to get a good understanding of your finances and spending habits. When you travel, you need an emergency fund because you will hit snags and have unforeseen costs. You will need to budget because you are not generating income. You will naturally find cheaper ways to go about life, whether it in terms of eating habits, transportation, or clothing.

Life gets cheaper…

Normal life is usually more expensive, you are paying for things you do not actually need. For example, many people start reading books or pick up new hobbies during a trip, realizing that they do not need a bunch of monthly streaming subscriptions after all.

Moreover, travelling will introduce you to places of varying costs. Most people’s default retirement plan is to retire at or near their current residence. Many never ever consider that the lower costs of living in other countries can significantly reduce the amount of savings needed for retirement. If you find a country that you love and that country has a low cost-of-living, your retirement plan suddenly becomes either cheaper or faster.

Engaging in a lifestyle in which your income comes from a country with a high cost-of-living while spending that income in a country with a low cost-of-living is essentially a form of arbitrage. Travel is the perfect first step for the lazy trader. It is a learning experience that forces you to think about your finances.

2. Save Money, the Lazy Way

Everyone knows that retirement requires saving money, but few people actually get serious about putting money aside. Humans are naturally lazy and naturally put off today what can be done tomorrow. We can work with that.

An easy way to save money without much effort is to use a round-up app. A round-up app rounds up your purchases to the nearest dollar, placing the excess into your investment vehicle of choice (e.g., a bank account, an index fund, or cryptocurrency). In this way, every time you buy something, you’re actually saving for your retirement.

If you want to be really lazy about it, just make sure the money goes into a passive investment vehicle, such as an exchange-traded-fund.

Here are some banking apps with round-up features you can check out:

Monzo (for UK banking)
Revolut (for US banking)
Raiz (for AUS banking)
Also check out Chase, which offers 5% interest on round-up deposits.

3. Think and Grow Poor

Think and Grow Rich is one of the best books on how your thought process can change your financial status. I’m not going to tell you to read it. But I am going to flip the title around to offer you a thought worm: Consider yourself 80% poorer than you actually are.

That is, if you’re making $5,000 a month from your job, mentally edit your salary to be $4,000 a month. If you can really convince yourself that this is true (while keeping your true income in the back of your head, of course), just for practical purposes, you will naturally save money. Just thinking in this way will stop you from making unnecessary purchases and get you to reconsider some of your expenses.

Better yet, if you really want to put this thought process to the test, immediately put 20% of your income into your savings/brokerage account as soon as you are paid. Then, force yourself to live on the remaining 80%. You don’t need to work at forcing yourself to be frugal if you suddenly give yourself a 20% pay cut (I like to think of it as giving your future self a 20% raise).

4. Invest Unconventionally

The standard advice given by a financial advisor is to diversify, and thus diversification certainly isn’t “unconventional.” What is conventional is the type of diversification recommended by financial advisors: 60% in a basket of stocks or index fund (itself diversified) and 40% in bonds. The problem with this type of investment is that it uses too narrow a definition of diversification.

If the market crashes, you could see as much as 60% your stock portfolio get dumped. And bonds typically go nowhere, barely able to beat inflation most of the time. We need to change our thinking about diversification.

To truly be a diversified investor, you need to be creative, fun. Instead of the standard 60/40 stocks/bonds mix, investors – especially young investors with longer time horizons – could stand to be more daring. Consider those who ignored the traditional investment advice and went strong into Bitcoin near its creation or into real estate before the bubble: This group of trend-buckers saw annual returns that would take the average investor decades to pull off.

Unconventional investment areas to consider:

• Creative real estate holdings, such as properties in regions that are seeing strong tech growth, thereby possibly holding property in the next Silicon Valley. On that note, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company plans to open new fabs in Arizona, and so this state might be worth a look for real estate investors.
• Uncommon exchange-traded funds (ETFs), especially those uncorrelated with the general market and foreign ETFs. Consider the Decline of the Retail Store (EMTY), Global Water (CGW), and Silver Shares Covered Calls (SLVO).
• Cryptocurrency. Try dollar-cost-averaging across many different coins to hedge your investment. You never know what coin will be the next success in this investment area.
• Set-it-and-forget-it physical goods: Coins, stamps, wine, art, and sneakers – among other things – all have the potential to appreciate in value and require little to no maintenance.

5. Create a Retirement Side Hustle

We are sent to school to learn a trade and expected to gain income exclusively from that trade. But sometimes a side-hustle brings in enough income to change your life, especially if we funnel all of its earnings into our retirement funds. With a side hustle, instead of investing your cash into your retirement, you invest your time.

Here are some ideas for side hustles that can help you save for retirement:

• Start an OnlyFans if you’re particularly attractive or an exhibitionist
• Sell on Etsy if you’re artistic or good with your hands
• Rent out your tools on Lindrs if you haven’t been tinkering much
• Buy used clothes at thrift shops and sell them online for a decent premium
• Become a private tutor if you have an in-demand skill

Pretty much everyone has some way to profit outside his primary job. An extra few hours of side-hustling per week in your off time is generally more rewarding – both financially and personally – than, say, sitting in front of the television.

Conclusion

Saving for retirement is a fight against inflation and time. If you’re too lazy, you’ll see inflation eat away at your earnings as you age. But if you can leverage your laziness in unconventional ways, you can make retirement planning easy.

Today, we went over five techniques that can help the lazy and/or easily bored investor start planning for retirement. Let’s review:

1. Travel to understand yourself and your finances at a deeper level
2. Use a round-up app to effortlessly save money
3. Consider yourself poorer than you are to reduce spending
4. Invest unconventionally to keep yourself focused and add diversification
5. Start a retirement side hustle for extra income and to alleviate the stress of saving

Even engaging in one of these habits will go a long way in creating a comfortable post-retirement lifestyle. Do yourself a favor: Today, choose one and get started. Your future self will thank you.

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Damon Verial

Having a background in statistics and psychology, Damon Verial has been applying his knowledge to the stock market since 2010. Having traded professionally and performing trading strategy backtests for clients, he has been featured in financial publications such as the Financial Times, SafeHaven, and the McMillian Portfolio. He also runs a financial newsletter at Seeking Alpha.

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