The Motley Fool
Matthew Frankel, CFP (TMFMathGuy)
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Kevin O’Leary, best known as Mr. Wonderful on NBC’s Shark Tank, is very concerned about the state of retirement savings and financial literacy in the United States.
O’Leary, who recently co-founded automated investing app Beanstox, recently sat down with me (virtually, of course) to share his concerns about younger Americans’ financial predicament and how he intends to be part of the solution.
We have a major financial problem in the United States
O’Leary’s mission started around the time the coronavirus outbreak started to spread across North America. “At the beginning of the pandemic — I’ve got a very large portfolio of companies, over 50 now — we were scrambling in March and April with PPP loans, and it gave us quite a wake-up call,” O’Leary said.
“That’s when I discovered that the majority of my employee base that are in their late 20s or early 30s — and we’re talking thousands of people in the up and down supply chain — had basically nothing saved. They had two weeks of salary, on average, in their bank accounts.”
The solution is simplicity
“The message is very simple. I’d like you to arrive in your 60s with something you can live on. That’s a notion most people can understand,” O’Leary says. “If you’re in your 20s or early 30s and you can just find a way to put $100 aside and do that each week and you invest it in the market, you’ll end up with somewhere around $1.5 million when you’re 65. And that’s a pretty good cushion.”
“The idea of Beanstox is that you attach it to your bank account, and you do a transfer of $100 a week. Or more if you wish. But the idea is once you put it into Beanstox, it does all the work. It auto-invests for you in ETFs — widely diversified portfolios — that will hopefully achieve the six to eight percent a year over a long period time.”
Excerpt. Read full article in The Motley Fool