by Jeff Cody

This is perhaps the most important blog I have written or will ever write regarding college and retirement. These subjects are huge and based on what I know vs. what is being taught to the public this may take some time to unravel. So, upfront, I'm going to recommend that you watch my videos on YouTube and consider registering for and attending one of our college affordability workshops that we will have each Tuesday evening at 6:30 p.m. Central. I'll share more about that at the end of this article.

Now then, let me discuss the BIGGEST mistake that people are making regarding college planning and retirement planning. Do you see this picture?

By inference, you are led to believe that you need a "sinking fund" for each category of needs, i.e., you need this fund for this and that fund for that. Right? Remember Sun Tzu, perhaps the founder of militarily thinking? Sun Tzu's "divide and conquer" strategy involves weakening an enemy's unity by creating divisions within their forces. A related tactic, often confused with dividing one's own forces, is that if you are twice as numerous as the enemy, you should divide your army into two, with one part attacking the front and the other the rear to crush the enemy.  Sounds great, but what's that got to do with money?

It has everything to do with it because the same principle applies.

Know what compounding is? Compound vs. simple interest? When you divide dollars and adapt a "microeconomic" approach to your finances, you are lessening the horsepower of those dollars.

Did you get that?

So long story short, if there was a way you could use ONE DOLLAR to do the work of 4-5 DOLLARS, doesn't that already sound like it just might be a more EFFICIENT APPROACH? That's why we teach our clients to think in terms of MACROECONOMIC thinking by measuring everything one is doing and increasing "horsepower" wherever possible. The end result can mean hundreds of thousands of dollars more by retirement for no additional risk or out of pocket expense.

To learn more, attend one of our workshops by going to CollegePlusRetirement.com/webinars and register for our Tuesday evening class.