Matt — Money Makeover winner: The submission that I put in was that I’d like to save $1 million and $1 in retirement accounts. The reason for the extra dollar is, whenever I’d go to get money from my grandmother she’d always say, ‘If you had a dollar in your shoe you wouldn’t be broke.’ So then I got to thinking about our retirement plans and if I had to make money last until I’m 100 or 101, I’ve got some work to do. I also wanted to make sure that I was doing right by my kids and by my wife and that I’m taking the right steps to take care of my family. I could probably use some help.
Greg McBride: You and your wife are actually doing a great job. You’re on target to reach your goal for retirement savings. There are some immediate needs that can be addressed — things like emergency savings, paying off some of the debt. From a standpoint of life insurance both you and your wife aren’t quite where you need to be.
Greg McBride: One area that really jumped out at me that needed immediate attention was the lack of emergency savings. This is an all-too-common problem, but without that you’re really a hostage to debt when unplanned expenses arise. Matt is a father. He’s married. He has 2 kids. Both he and his wife need a certain amount of life insurance coverage. They need to get a better handle on what their monthly expenses are. It’s tough to know what the destination is in terms of things like emergency savings or even life insurance coverage if you don’t know what it takes to run a household on a monthly or annual basis.
Greg McBride: As I said, you’re on target for retirement savings so just keep up the good work there. You’ll also be in a position to ramp up that savings in the years to come.
Matt – Money Makeover winner: I’ve read over the proposals and we’re going to try to follow these step by step here and get going on the right track. Again, we’re very thankful and very grateful to the whole team there.