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Want To Retire Early? Learn the Intelligent Investing Secret - March 17, 2020

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Building sufficient financial resources to retire early may sound like a dream, but making that dream come true is not as hard as it may sound. The main thing is simply to save more money each month. No big deal, right? Well...

Typically, advisors peg 15% to 20% of total income saved each month as a goal - but if you want to retire earlier, you probably have to ratchet that number up to 40% or 50% of your income. Not a feat easily accomplished when you review your take into account that a good portion of your paycheck goes to essential, non-negotiable lifestyle items. However, if you are willing to make some serious lifestyle changes and sacrifices, it's possible.

A relatively new movement called Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE) has been developed around this "sacrifice and over-save now to retire early" concept. FIRE followers develop strict savings programs (up to 75% of income) and make associated sacrifices like living in small apartments, walking to work every day, restrictive diets, and so on. This path may be too restrictive for many, but the mindset offers some takeaways that might be worth considering.

To start, stick with the essentials of long-term growth investing: Build a diversified portfolio of stocks with exposure to various styles, sizes, sectors, and regions.

To speed up the retirement investment cycle, you can build a portfolio structured with more risk - and the potential for higher returns. It should in any case be adequately diversified to safeguard against sharper than normal market downturns that can be hard to recuperate from and that can ruin any opportunity to achieve your early retirement goal. There are various strategies to diversify a portfolio, and how you do so should be guided by your age, your risk appetite, your growth and income needs, and your long-term objectives.

After accelerating your savings and setting up an ongoing plan, invest your savings into your portfolio at the earliest opportunity. Try not to attempt to time the market. Stay put, and let the compounding characteristics of the markets do its work to help grow your retirement wealth exponentially over time.

You may want to look at growth stocks with attributes acceptable for retirement investing like low beta, strong earnings estimates, positive sales growth, and expected future growth.

The Zacks Rank routinely recognizes lower risk growth retirement portfolio picks, and here are a few that may be worth considering: Jack In The Box (JACK - Free Report) , PennyMac Financial (PFSI - Free Report) and US Ecology . These growth stocks have strong Zacks Ranks and a beta of 1 or lower, with earnings and sales growth of at least 5% over the past 5 years.

Do You Know the Top 9 Retirement Investing Mistakes?

Whether you're planning to retire early or not, don't let investing mistakes derail your plans.

If you have $500,000 or more to invest and want to learn more, click the link to download our free report, 9 Retirement Mistakes that will Ruin Your Retirement.


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Janus Henderson Sustainable & Impact Core Bond ETF (JACK) - free report >>

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