Enjoy your retirement, plan well!
Start with well-defined goals, and revisit them at least annually. The closer you get to retirement, the more often you should sit down and think about your overall retirement strategy. In Ernie Zelinski’s “How to Retire Wild, Happy and Free,” the author makes the argument that setting your retirement goals expands far beyond managing your finances. Retirement planning should encompass all areas of your lifestyle, from where you live and where you travel to how you spend your day and what truly are your income requirements.
Many people get great satisfaction from work. So, if you are retired, and you like to work, pick something you like to do and gain emotional satisfaction from that activity. This includes working for charitable causes, hobbies, family involvement, etc. Many people derive emotional satisfaction and self-worth from working.
Think about your largest asset. Hint-it’s probably your home! Will you sell it, downsize, keep it, perhaps take advantage of a reverse mortgage. Talk to your financial planner about all of these options. This is one of the most crucials decions you can make in your golden years.
Another aspect of retirement is lifetime learning. Staying relevant in today’s technology economy requires a willingness to learn and adapt. Consider this: most medical professionals would agree that 20% to 30% of medical knowledge becomes outdated after just three years.
Budgeting is more than setting a top-line spending number based on a pre-arranged percentage. Often times, we work from the bottom up, exploring what a client actually spends, instead of what they think they spend. It is not uncommon for individuals to drastically underestimate their spending on non-essential items.
Let’s consider income. Retirement income can come from many sources. Social security, pensions, retirement accounts, annuities, dividends, even earned income.
Take the time to go through your employment history and discover what benefits you may have forgotten. Did you perhaps forget that you have earned an pension from an employer fromt decades ago? . Inheritances? By investing the inheritance along the same lines of a retirement asset and creating a lifetime income stream.
Invest for your whole life. Just as your budget is not going to be static during your retirement years, the idea that your investment portfolio should never change is obsolete as well. We live in a world of massive disruption and change. Years ago, retirees would abide by the rule taking 100%, subtracting their age, giving them the “appropriate” allocation to the equity market (blue chips only!). Today’s world does not permit such simplicity of thought.
Successful retirement comes down flexibility. Flexibility of goals. Flexibility of income streams. Flexibility of spending. Flexibility of retirement investments. Flexibility of the overall plan. As you design your retirement plan, take the time to build in flexibility. It will help build peace of mind, and lead to a more successful retirement.
Nick Ventura is the founder and chief executive of Ventura Wealth Management.
text courtesy of https://www.msn.com/
