Every once in a while, you can get a fully paid-for car from your company where you get a job and they give you a car, and you don't have to waste that expense. That would be pretty cool. Sometimes you get a stipend from that company where they just kick you over a couple of bucks, and you get to choose which car you want as long as that stipend pays for it. But sometimes, some of us, we don't get that option. But we have a very specific car in mind. It's a dream car. It's a car or a version of a car that's so important to us that we're willing to put money aside to go out of our way to make sacrifices for that car. You can see it. You can feel it. You can smell it. You can envision yourself driving through the Autobahn. Actually, maybe just driving too fast through the mountains here in America. But it's a car that you're willing to work for. This is an analogy for the retirement you want.
Today, the responsibility of retirement falls directly on our shoulders. There was a time when an employer would pretty much pay for retirement for you. You would get these big pensions through your employer. They'd put a bunch of money into it. Maybe you'd put a couple of bucks into it, and then you retire and you're off to the races and everything is fine and dandy. That's that paid-for company car. But we definitely got to wave bye-bye to that, especially now in the 2000s and 2020s. So the question becomes our third example of cars, what car do you envision? What retirement do you envision? What retirement do you dream of? What sacrifices are you gonna make to get that retirement? That's what we're gonna talk about today.
Most of you, I bet, are saying something along the lines of, I tell you to envision this. Well, I'm just going to have the retirement that I'm going to have once I get there. Once I get there, what I've done is what I'm gonna have, and I'll make do with what I got. It's a very passive approach, I may say, and after 15 years of doing this, it's actually a really popular approach that most people are utilizing. But I believe that this type of mentality, the let's just see what happens when I get there type situation, is the type of mentality that leads us to having a retirement that is way worse or way more underwhelming than what we could have achieved by taking steps along the way.
The purpose of the dream retirement is the purpose that you're gonna make sure you're investing and taking the time in evaluating taxes and saving enough for that retirement. The vision gives you the purpose, it gives you the pat on the back, and it gives you the reason to save 15 to 20 percent of your hard-earned dollars in some sort of retirement savings or retirement investing vehicle. When it gets tough to save that amount of money, you can remember I'm doing it because I want five extra vacations in retirement, or I want my house paid off, I wanna make sure my family's gonna get some money at the very end, or I wanna make sure to live comfortably and not have to worry about any expenses. That's why you're doing it.
So, which version of retirement are you willing to buy? Start envisioning your dream retirement today and take the necessary steps to make it a reality. Remember, retirement planning is a journey, and the choices you make now will impact your future. Stay proactive, stay focused, and start building the retirement you deserve.