Retirement Planning - Do You Have A Retirement Plan?
CNN reported recently that many Americans are getting worried that they won’t have enough saved for their retirement. The biggest concerns appear to be health care costs, lack of or modest savings, and unrealistic expectations of how much they will spend in their retirement.
By staring early and with some retirement planning, you can ensure you sock enough away for that fateful day when you are ready to leave the workforce. If you are a baby boomer and fall into the group that has modest savings and no retirement plan, then you have little time to lose!
Here are some retirement planning questions to help you establish a realistic retirement goal:
- When do you plan on retiring?
- How much money do you thing you will need in retirement? Be realistic here: Will you still have a mortgage or car payments? Will you have other debts? What exactly will you spend less on and what will you spend more on?
- What do you anticipate your social security benefit to be?
- Based on the answers above how much money will you need to accumulate before retirement?
Here are some retirement planning tips to help you achieve your goals:
- If you are not participating in your employer’s pension plan, join!
- Maximize your 401K and IRA plans.
- Invest in long-term investments and avoid short term liquid investments. Stocks have more risk but better return over a longer period than bonds or CD’s.
- Avoid withdrawals from your retirement plans as there may be penalties.
- Diversify your investments across industries and across boarders.
If you are trying to figure out your financial situation a good record keeping system can help. I use Mvelopes Personalon-line budgeting service. It has some great features and is accessible from wherever you are. You can try other programs like Quicken
. They work just as well but I personally recommend Mvelopes Personal.