I interviewed my grandmother to see what her methods of saving are and how she prepared for retirement.
Saving money
The first
question I asked her was how she went about saving money. The first thing she
told me was to never spend money she didn’t have aside from buying a home. She
also told me that after she all bills were paid for the month she would take a
little to entertain herself then the rest was put into a savings account that
at the time had a 13% interest rate.
The best idea she gave me about saving was not
to spend money foolishly and to never spend money that you don’t have (aside
from buying a home) as an example she told me that if she did not have enough
money for something like a TV she would not go into debt to get one, she would
go without one until she had the money for one.
Investing for retirement
Then she told me that she invested her money
as well as save it, before she bought a home she found a triplex she was a bit
short on the down payment for it so she borrow money from a family member and
made payments to them each month to pay it back. She lived in the triplex for a
time and made money of the other two apartments in it and still used the same
method of saving.
Later on she sold the triplex and invested in
a house and took very good care of it as the values of it increased[DD(11] over the years she eventually sold the home. She is now retired and
lives off the money she saved over the years as well as the pension from her
job as a teacher.
