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Easy Investing Secrets to an Early Retirement - August 12, 2020

Achieving the financial freedom to retire early a dream for most. Making that dream a reality isn't as tricky as it sounds. The secret is simple: Save a lot more each month. Sounds easy, right? Not so fast.

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 generally new development called Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE) has been created around this "sacrifice and over-save now to retire early" idea. FIRE supporters create exacting savings plans (up to 75% of income) and make related compromises like living in small homes, walking to work every day, prohibitive weight control plans, etc. This way might be unreasonably prohibitive for many, yet the mentality offers a few takeaways that may merit consideration.

The first point is to adhere to the key principles of long-term investing, including developing a diversified portfolio that includes stocks with various styles, sizes, sectors and regions.

You may be able to accelerate your potential retirement earnings by consciously seeking higher returns (and also accepting more risk) in your investment portfolio. But whatever your risk tolerance, your portfolio must be diversified to protect against extreme market movements that could jeopardize your early retirement objective. You can choose from a number of ways to allocate investments to diversify your portfolio, and these should be informed by your individual goals, growth and income needs, appetite for risk, and age.

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.

Astute investors pick retirement growth stocks with low beta, strong earnings estimates, positive sales growth, and expected future growth.

The Zacks Rank regularly identifies attractive growth stocks ideal for retirement investing. Here are just a few that might be worth consideration: OceanFirst Financial (OCFC), Ready Capital (RC) and Camden National (CAC). These are top-ranked stocks, with at least 5% earnings and sales growth over the past five years, and boast beta equal to or lower than 1.

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Camden National Corporation (CAC) : Free Stock Analysis Report
 
OceanFirst Financial Corp. (OCFC) : Free Stock Analysis Report
 
Ready Capital Corp (RC) : Free Stock Analysis Report
 
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