What’s a Solopreneur to Do About Planning for Retirement?

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It’s been a long, sometimes hard, sometimes thrilling road. As a solopreneur, you’re all your business has. Without you, there would be no company. But that’s the way you like it. That’s the way you roll.

However, you’ve seen your share of hard times. There were days when you thought about giving it all up. Everything you’d worked for, everything you’d built, just seemed to take too much of your life’s precious energy. Surely anything you could do for a living would be easier than being a solopreneur.

But you didn’t give up. You kept on keeping on. The life of a solopreneur was the life you wanted, and you didn’t want to give it up, no matter how tough things got. You had a dream of the business you wanted to create, and it was always that dream that kept you going.

But now, the time has come for you to plan for your retirement, too. What’s a solopreneur to do?

 

Are We There Yet?

Finally, you think, you have arrived. Or so it would seem.

Now, your friends and family view you with something akin to envy, if not out and out admiration. To them, your business looks like an overnight success. However, you know the score. You’ve been at this for a very long time.

You welcome success, if success it is. You’re still working pretty hard, truth be told. If you can call your business a success, it’s because you can consistently pay your bills by doing what you love.

 

So Now What?

But also, truth be told, you’re starting to get your head above water, if only just a little. No longer must you plow every little cent you make back into your business. Or use every penny you earn just to survive one more month. No, you quietly and proudly tell yourself at the end of every long workday, you’re one solopreneur who’s going to make it. Maybe you’re even a solopreneur who’s already made it, depending on your definition of “making it.”

As a matter of fact, you’re even starting to experience that most elusive of goals: a little discretionary income at the end of every month, after you’ve paid all of your essential business and personal expenses.

Proudly, you’ve been squirreling those precious excess funds away for a rainy day. And now? Now, your little stash is growing larger as time goes on. Hardly able to believe your good fortune, you cast about for a strategy that will help you prepare for retirement.

 

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Whoa, Nellie!

You’ve heard the cautionary tales. “A fool and his money are soon parted,” your parents told you when you were growing up. So you’re careful with your money. No lavish spending sprees for you.

Maybe you could get lucky and fund your retirement by cashing in big at a casino online, you muse. Wouldn’t that solve the problem quickly? A friend of your cousin’s friend won a huge sum that way a couple of years ago. But then you have to admit to yourself that you work too hard for every dollar to be willing to risk your money that way.

No, what you need, you tell yourself, are some simple strategies for investing your hard-earned money so that it can go to work for you.

It can help to remind yourself that your largest investment continues to be your own business. As a solopreneur, though, that can either be reassuring or intimidating, depending on your perspective.

 

 

What Do the Experts Say?

Experts recommend more diversification in one’s investments than one’s own business. So you begin building up your other investments by developing a portfolio that you never, ever touch, no matter what. Additionally, you set up structures for both your business and your investments so that your creditors can’t get to them, either.

As you cautiously diversify your investments, you really diversify. That is, once you’ve chosen the platform that works best for you, you invest in companies outside of your own industry. That way, the economic cycles that affect your business have less of a chance of also affecting your investments.

In the meantime, you remember to keep some cash reserves not only for personal security, but also as protection for your business. That is, you prepare your business for a possible economic reversals as well as you can.

 

Finally

You continue to work hard and invest in your own business. Meanwhile, you also continue building your new investments, confident that not only is your business successful, but also your retirement planning is well in hand.

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source http://www.business-opportunities.biz/2018/04/01/solopreneur-prepare-retirement/