Retirement delayed and broke anyway

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

81. You/ve made a lot of wonderful points.

Making sure your wife had enough FICA credits to get SS. That's huge.

Paying cash for a car is huge. My very first car, I needed to finance through my credit union. And at that it was a very modest car, not at all expensive. It was paid off inside a year.

When my sons were very young, we had them open savings accounts. They had to put half of their allowance, and half of any gifted money into the account. When they were wanting to purchase a car, they each had enough cash to buy a modest used car. No loan. It was a revelation to both of them, that a car could be purchased for cash.

When I was in 7th grade, many decades ago, my math teacher took a week off from the regular math curriculum to teach us a bunch of basic financial things. Like how to write a check. The real cost of a mortgage. This was many decades ago, and so I can't remember many specifics, but I do recall that he taught us a lot of very basic things. The kinds of things that really ought to be taught to kids early on.

I know I tried to teach my sons these things, and I hope I succeeded.