Bob Nelson – Is It Too Late to Plan for Your Financial Security?

Today we ask the question: is it too late to plan for your financial security?

Featuring:
Bob Nelson, Eugene real estate investment broker
Marcia Edwards, Eugene residential real estate broker

Marcia Edwards: Before the microphone turned on, Bob said he’s never made mistakes, so I’ll speak from my perspective and I’m a goofball. I wanted to talk to those folks who say, is it too late? Have I made too many mistakes financially? Is there a way to recover, especially in the investment side of my life?

Bob Nelson: Frankly, it’s never too late to change a pattern that would lead to the stabilizing and then the increase of your net worth, which would allow you an opportunity to withstand future negative times because you have built up a net worth, a value that you can cash in small portions of to survive the bad periods.

Marcia Edwards: I think that what’s important from my corner is that you want to create urgency. No, it’s not too late, but today is a good day. Tomorrow is not as good a day and so on. So you want to make sure that you engaged today and I would say first you want to make sure you’re spending appropriately.

You want to take a really hard look. Where are you spending money? Are you using the services that you’re paying for, who sign up for Hulu and never been on it? Things like that. You want to make sure that you’ve right sized your expenses the best you can.

Bob Nelson: And that’s an interesting thing. It’s difficult for you to do because you’re standing in the middle of the forest and you’re trying to figure out a path to a particular point of success. It’s difficult to do on your own. If somebody walked in to you, would you help them with this type of thinking?

Marcia Edwards: Absolutely.

Bob Nelson: Me too.

Marcia Edwards: And I would really encourage you to do that. Talk to someone who you trust or someone that can mentor you. Or ideally I would say talk to someone who knows your finances and your context. Someone you’re comfortable opening up to.

It could be a CPA. Could be a lender. You want to understand what it takes to qualify now to recover your credit and scores, that kind of thing. You want to start the conversation with the people that have been there before or know how to get you somewhere else.

Bob Nelson: And it’s an interesting concept, but the first thing you have to do is recognize a need to do that. Most people don’t recognize the need, then they babbled through life and come out the other end surviving on social security. We hear continually that social security is a dead item X years down the road. That would not make me feel very good.

Marcia Edwards: Well, I could plan really well if I knew what my death day would be. I don’t want to know my death day would be. if you get the context. If I knew I was going to live to 100, then I’d have some urgency to make that endurance possible that I’m planning for probably 80 in my mind because I don’t want to put my resources aside that would need to keep me to a 100.

So you’ve got to reframe and think. Best case scenario. I live a long time. I need support for that period of time.

Join Eugene, Oregon, real estate experts: Bob Nelson, Real Estate Investment Broker with Pacwest Real Estate Investments, and Marcia Edwards, Residential Real Estate Broker with Windermere Real Estate, daily at 5:30pm on KPNW for the “Real Estate Today” radio show.