H • RUBY, WILDING & SWANSBURG and the n picks up the prints . Tod ay, yo u jus t s nap a picture of th at sunse t on your phone and share it wit h t he worl d via Instagram. Likewise, if you want to watch a movie on Friday night, you’re more likely to order it on demand or via Netflix th an to drive to a video store , pic k o ut a DVD (or VHS!) , and bring it home. In f act, we’re using new rules for most things we do. Do you bank online? Avoid eating too much red meat? Drive a car with an air bag? Research TVs online before buyi ng one ? In all these cases we’ve found better, more efficient, more rewarding ways to do many of the t hings w e depend on for a ha ppy l ife. But not when we save for retirement. There, the vast majority of us still play by very old rules. Your retirement savings represent your ability to enjoy a rewarding, happy future. Yet, most of us are using rules that a re outdated, an d worse, n o long er valuable. Imagine if every time you wanted to take a trip, you had to call the airline and have the m mail you a ticket. That’s the way i t used to wor k. It’s silly to acce pt th at kind of inefficiency today , whe n yo u c an get tickets electronically in a matter of minutes. Or imagine if you broke your ar m but didn’t use an X-ra y to see what’s broke n. For years , doctors had to guess wh at kind of fracture yo u had . Today , no one with access to good medical care would rely on guess es ra t her t ha n X -rays. When it comes to saving for retirement, most of us are making do with approaches that are as inefficient as mailing airline tickets and as ris ky as setti ng broke n bones witho ut X- rays. It’s time to update our rules.
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