Ottoman or stool
A low upholstered piece beside your bed introduces a soft element into a serene bedroom retreat. Store bedside essentials in a sturdy tray, which can easily be moved if you ever need additional seating or a place to perch while putting on your shoes.
People with more debt were less satisfied, but lowering their debt loads didn’t seem to make them much happier, says Russell James, a certified financial planner and director of graduate studies in charitable planning at Texas Tech University. James conducted the study with Scott Garrett, then a doctoral candidate and now a certified financial planner at Ronald Blue Trust in Houston. The pair tracked 839 adults age 50 and older for four years.
The researchers don’t know why the investment effect was bigger but say personality may play a role. In other words, unhappy people may be more likely to get into debt.
“If a person is dissatisfied with where they are in life, maybe that makes them spend more on credit cards,” James says.
We don’t know if the same patterns would be true for younger people, but the researchers were confident enough in their results to advise financial planners to focus on building assets as “the best way to improve client financial satisfaction.”
Financial planners already take a pretty balanced approach to the “invest or pay off debt” question. They encourage both. They want people to save for retirement and emergencies while educating them about the difference between “good” debt, which helps people get ahead financially, and “bad” debt, which doesn’t. Planners typically prioritize paying off high interest rate debt such as credit cards while taking a slower approach to mortgages and student loans, which tend to have lower, tax-deductible rates.
The people who really need to hear this message are do-it-yourselfers going all-in on debt repayment, not realizing what they may be costing themselves in the long run. These include people who are:
Passing up 401(k) matches. There’s really no excuse to turn down free money.
Prepaying mortgages, which is some of the cheapest money available, rather than saving for retirement or paying down more expensive debt.
Killing themselves trying to pay off student loan debt early, especially when those loans have low, fixed rates.
Struggling with far more debt than they can realistically hope to repay.
Where many fall short is with emergency and longterm savings. The Fed tells us 44 percent of adults can’t come up with $400 for an unexpected expense. More than half of workingage adults risk not being able to sustain their standard of living in retirement, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.
It’s particularly important not to stifle retirement savings, since the longer you wait to get started, the harder it is to catch up.
Being debt-free is a great goal to achieve — eventually. But your haste to get there shouldn’t leave you poorer, and less happy, in the long run.