1. Invest in your health (covered above), exercise, etc.
2. Asset Allocation (which you should already be doing) becomes critical because by now you should have enough assets to make a difference. A good guideline is to keep your age% in bonds+cash. If I had heeded that advice last year my 401k would not have turned into a 201k.
3. Don’t pay 100% of your kids college. They need to have some skin in the game. I make my kids pay 100% of each fall semester. I then match them dollar for dollar in the spring (tuition, rent, beer money, everything). They can earn their % via work, scholarships, loans, whatever.
4. Plan for the care of your aging parents.
5. Travel while you are still healthy. It’s no fun to visit the great pyramid at age 62 and not have enough lung capacity to climb the steps.
6. Simplify – you now realize what is important to you. Get rid of everything else – declutter your life, your garage, your calendar, etc. By now you should be able to say no and not really care what anyone else thinks.
7. Consider career #2 – are you willing to do your current job for another 20 years? Can you retire at 55 and take a totally different job? Do you need to start training for job #2 today?
8. Reinvest your time, talents, and treasure in the things that matter (much easier to do once you’ve decluttered).
9. Start looking for the location where you wish to live when you are old. Begin putting down some roots there. You need to start planting relationships by the time you’re 55 BEFORE YOU RETIRE. The goal is to create a network of friends who are willing to drive you to the doctor when you can no longer drive. If you invest your time, talent, and treasure wisely you can create deep friendships with people who are 10 years younger than you. Deep friendships are created by serving others. When you’re 55 you should help people who are 10 years older than you … and their kids will in turn feel that it is fair to help you because you helped their dad… good karma dude!
10. Look at where you are and the direction you are going. If you don’t like what you see – CHANGE IT.

I too budget an ammount for the year, and in my case do most of my giving in recurring monthly gifts – like $20/month to Doctors without Borders or $10/month to the local library, park, animal shelter.

As folks have said, you won’t miss the money – and it will feel so good.

Minor note – I get interest rates of 9 to 10% back home on CDs while facing an American inflation rate of 4%. This gives me an incredible real return of 5%. It also helps diversify my currency risk.

One of our goals for 2009 was to be more charitable. I’ve made a point to donate at least once a month – it’s almost like a budgeted item now. That way when we get to November and haven’t hardly given anything away we won’t feel pressure to do it all in a couple months (especially with Christmas demands occurring then too). Just start small, you really won’t even miss the money.

While I agree with other commentators that giving time to charities as important, if not more so, than giving money, it’s important not to undercut the need my charities have for money, especially now when so many other sources of funds are drying up. I’m on my church’s consistory board (the decision making body; think of a board of directors), and with the economic downturn, we’re facing cuts to our charitable contributions just to keep our church from going under. If those charities are going to sustain their activities, they will need outside donors to pick up the slack.

This year I decided to budget 1% of my net income to give away. On the one hand, that seems less-than-generous to me; on the other hand, it’s a set amount – and I’ve got to start somewhere!

I think this is like fitness and diet (and I speak from long experience): talking about it isn’t worth an awful lot. The key is action, my friend!

I’m in my early 20s now. Kinda find the advice by Kiplinger featured here spot on. Like having a marketable skill and also creating a network when we are young.

Now let’s find someone that I could network with.

Interesting to see that kicking the debt cycle falls under the 30s group. Probably I’m a little too optimistic to want nothing to do with debt before I reach my 30th.

Daniel

Also, I think a good tip for everyone no matter what their age (but especially good for 20-somethings who may not have rock solid stable careers/jobs)is to diversify income streams. I really don’t think it’s a good idea these days to depend 100% on employment for all of your income. This is where having a marketable skill can come in handy- being able to build up some sort of freelancing gig on the side can be invaluable when your regular income falls off a cliff.

Look at the people who built up marketable skills 20 years ago by knowing how to build cars or something that today is pretty much obsolete. What do those people do today? What choices to they have?

My advice: find a marketable skill and stay on your toes. Stay relevant. Don’t let yourself become obsolete.

Education, specifically graduate education, is quite costly in the U.S. Having invested in law school and racked up a substantial number of student loans, despite living frugally for much of my 20s, I now have a marketable skill, but one that I’ve discovered isn’t me at all after practicing law for several years.

While I think it’s a great suggestion to invest in education, I also advocate taking 4-5 years off from serious career pursuits in your 20s to consider what you might want to do.

The charity work I’m involved in, animal rescue transport, has NO use for donations. They need people with cars to get animals out of kill shelters and into safe havens. Writing a check does nothing for this cause.

Scott, Rochelle and Xi Xia are great coaches and mentors and would be happy to work with you on your fitness journey and goals. Crossfit is addictive, very adaptable for any age/skill level, and if you do the work will yield great results.

Note I have no vested interest in recommending Crossfit Portland and am not currently working out there, just high regard for the great folks there.

Then sell it to Kiplinger

I also don’t have a will yet. I don’t have kids and all my family members are better off financially than I am, so that’s one way I could possibly contribute to charitable groups whose work I support.

#2 on the 30s list is one I’ve only recently learned–if there’s something I want, I can save for it in advance. For instance, I spent three years telling myself I couldn’t afford the couch I wanted and it never dawned on me that I could put money into a savings account for it each month. (I know, this seems completely obvious to other people… but it really wasn’t a part of how my parents did things–saving for something specific was never an option.) I’ve actually found it’s a really fun strategy, although I still have a bit of trouble actually buying the thing I’m saving for once my savings cover the cost.

By charitable, does that mean donating your time or money?

I think giving to the community or to those around you in some form of time or money is important; I’ve done both. I just wasn’t sure what you meant in this case.

Take stock:
1) What part of your money management habits works really well for you right now? What doesn’t? Use this to target areas YOU need to work on.

2) What part of your overall life works well – and what doesn’t? Do you want a different career or a different home? What do you need to do to make it happen? Some things are impossible, but other things are quite doable – and let’s face it, if 3 teenagers have moved out, who wouldn’t want a smaller house to clean?

3) What “stuff” do you want to unload or acquire? Do you still watch the VHS tapes? Is the bed you bought for your first apartment still giving you a good night’s sleep?

Rethinking your plans
4) Emergency fund and insurance. Is it sufficient for the life you have now? My minimum is living expenses for 6 months. When our living expenses go up, so does the EF. Is your homeowner’s or renter’s insurance still appropriate for your current belongings? Do you have people who depend on your income? If so term life insurance would be useful.

5) Earning potential. What does it look like for the next 5 or 10 years? Depending on what’s going on in YOUR life (illness, parents’ health, kids hitting puberty or college) you may have more or less time and energy to put into making money. Maybe you want to start a side business, or maybe you need to cut back to part-time, but figure out how you’re going to adjust your spending and saving as your income changes.

6) Yourself. Are you happy with yourself? Are there things you want to change? Do you want a cleaner house, to play an instrument, to pray or meditate daily, or to do a 5K? What do you need to do to make it happen?

7) Letting go. Most of us in the “first world” have a lot of choices in life. Sometimes it’s good to realize that you don’t HAVE to do it all. If you’re beating yourself up for not having 3 books in the New York Times Bestseller’s list even though sitting down to write makes you crazy, maybe it’s time to realize you don’t like writing. Just a thought.

Plan for the future:
Build the health habits you want for the decades ahead. Do you want to be able to walk 5 miles? Have you been ignoring a problem like asthma? Get started now.

9) Retirement. Are you investing for retirement? Are your investments still appropriate? If you’re 100% in stocks, now may be the time to direct new money into bonds. If you’re doing a 401(k) rollover or otherwise getting a lump, you may want to consider something like Vanguard’s Balanced Fund.

10) Friends and Family. Which ones do you most enjoy spending time with? Which help you move? Be sure to nurture those relationships – because you’ll want them in the future.

But I’m so glad that in our mid-thirties my wife and I started to get smart about money. We still have a long way to go, but we are much more responsible than we once were (and way ahead of the curve if you consider the “average” consumer).

Thanks for this article. And thanks for the steady stream of reminders and ideas about how to get my financial house in order.

Cheers,
Adam