How to fund a comfortable retirement ~ Joy Healey can inspire you!

Enstine Muki

6 years ago

How to fund a comfortable retirement is the question everyone should answer before that age of retirement. As a matter of fact, if you fail to answer this inevitable question now, it may be too late and of course, your retirement will be uncomfortable!

You agree with me that no one (including you) is ever willing to be broke during retirement. The only way to avoid retirement is death and no one on earth prays to die early. I’m sure most octogenarians, nonagenarians and centenarians still pray to see the next day.

The featured blogger this week, in her story inspires you to look around and make sure you are building a solid foundation to stand on during retirement. She came after Kim Willis and Kimberly George.

Meet Joy Healey

Joy lives in NW London, has two sons, two grand-daughters and two grand-dogs! Her hobbies (if only she had more time) are reading and line-dancing. She volunteers at a local dog-rehoming centre and at her Church.

After 30+ years self-employed in the computer industry, Joy suddenly woke up to the fact that she’d delayed planning for an income in retirement to the point that it was “too late” for conventional methods to work. What little planning she HAD done was decimated when one of the trusted darlings of the UK pension providers went belly-up, so saving into a pension fund went back to square one.

If It’s To Be, It’s Up To Me

Unwilling to accept a reduced life-style due to poor pension planning, Joy decided to start a part-time online business in parallel with running her two offline businesses of bespoke accounting software development and book-keeping. It’s a matter of pride to her that her longest software client has been with her well over thirty years, so she must be doing something right!

However as so often in life, “pride comes before a fall”. She imagined that her 30+ years in the computer industry would give her a flying head start when it came to developing a part-time online business. Naively trusting silver-tongued gurus who told her how “easy” it was to earn an online income, she embarked on a roller-coaster online career, but without understanding the importance of certain vital steps.

First Venture Into Online Marketing

Her first online success was 5 years with a UK based MLM selling memberships of a Lottery syndicate. Her initial demonstration of the power (and later the pitfalls) of Internet Marketing came when she introduced a casual acquaintance who just ran with the business. At the time all she saw was a steady stream of distributors pouring into her team and the commissions just rolled in, even surpassing the income from her full-time business. Back then it just seemed like magic, but later analysis revealed the planned and very ethical strategy this distributor had used so effectively.

For a while this MLM income seemed to be the answer to the “how to fund a comfortable retirement” question. Sadly towards the end of those five years the parent company over-stretched themselves trying to launch into TWO similar market-places. Both expensive launches flopped disastrously and the company was taken over by a competitor that closed down all affiliate accounts literally overnight – taking with them everyone’s prospect and customer contact details. Many tried to challenge this, but to no avail.

Those savvy distributors who had maintained their own contact lists just took their team with them to the next venture – although only a few ever achieved the same success as with the Lottery syndicates. At the time Joy had neither the understanding of the need, nor the technical skills required, to maintain her own “list” and lost the lot! Three good things came out of this apparent disaster:

Because it was a part-time business she still had her main income to fall back on
Rather than spending them, she had used all the Lottery earnings on home improvements and financing her younger son’s now successful property business
She discovered the need to learn how to do Internet Marketing “properly” – and was told that this started by having a blog.

Joy Healey’s Blogging Career

Joy has been blogging in her “named” domain for about three years now. She has been through three phases of blogging:

Completely dire, having followed the “wrong” leaders. These blogs are now wiped into oblivion and good riddance.
Well-researched and well-written content on two blogs in the health niche that she worked her socks off with, but she didn’t understand the importance of promotion and engagement! These two were “retired” just recently – with some regret because they represented a lot of hard work – but there were too many balls to keep in the air.
The current (and final! phase) is learning to do it properly and with focus, following leaders who “walk the walk” instead of “talk the talk”.

Joy’s Target Audience Is….

…. people looking to start a part-time online business, juggling the demands of family life and a current job or business.

This especially includes those who can’t put their hand on their heart and know that they have made adequate provision for a comfortable retirement income. For these people a side-line business that they can pick up and put down as time permits can be a life-saver. Her “collapsed pension” lesson suggests that even if you think you have a good income plan, it’s no bad thing to have a “just in case” plan B.

Most of Joy’s days are tied up with the off-line business that still pays the day-to-day bills. So most of the work involved in running her online business is done when sane people are in bed fast asleep. One of Joy’s colleagues referred to this as “Blogging After Dark” and it kind of stuck.

Above all, she is reaching out to people who understand that income from an online business doesn’t just happen out of thin air. When you learn and implement proper strategies – even if that costs a few dollars (from current income) – you will save time, money and stress in the long run.

Five Approaches To An Online Business

Thefirst three are the ones Joy put the most time into – there are many others, just a few of which you can read from items 4 and 5 below!

Joy initially created some online digital products. However doing this part-time, she found that the time involved in learning the skills to create them and promote them didn’t justify the sales made.
Affiliate marketing– promoting ready-made digital products – made much more sense to her, given the limited time available.
A product based network marketing business with repeatable products.
There are online coaches https://joyhealey.com/online-coaching-can-transform-your-business/ and tutors and who offer an excellent service working from home with clients happily paying 4 figure sums for their knowledge and expertise.
Other possibilities: https://kingged.com/work-online-from-home-and-get-paid/

Experiences with (1) decided her that this was not a good choice for her as a part-timer. Instead she feels that learning Internet Marketing “properly” open up (2) and (3) as suitable paths for part-timers.

Unfortunately, for Joy, (3) fell by the wayside when the company she was promoting ceased trading – which is one of the dangers of network marketing.

So with the lessons she has learned while taking her part-time business online, Joy is now spreading her risk over a few different products and learning Affiliate Marketing to promote them.

Connect With Joy on Social Media

Engage With Joy Here

Do you still worry about how to fund a comfortable retirement? Does Joy’s story inspire you?

You can engage with her right here on this blog. Drop her a comment and she will be right here to respond.

NB: Don’t forget to grab Enstine’s ebook on Affiliate Marketing for bloggers. Use coupon code CD16