Be Open About Planning Your Retirement
Retirement is a big step. Exchanging full-time work for full-time retirement can be an emotional transition. Throw in the financial aspect of retirement and it can be quite overwhelming. You can avoid becoming overwhelmed about planning for your retirement if you allow yourself to look at planning differently.
The Basics: Gotta Have Money To Retire
When planning your retirement be sure to make accurate financial projections; the average retiree spends approximately 30 years in retirement. With that in mind, before you retire you will need to have enough money to live on for at least one-third of your life. From that perspective retirement sounds impossible, especially when people are losing their jobs or being downsized and the values of 401k plans keep decreasing due to negative market cycles. With such insurmountable odds, how can you accumulate enough money to retire?
Accumulation Is Not Always About The Money
If you think about the accumulation of money differently there is more than one way to accomplish your accumulation phase. When planning your retirement, the traditional view of accumulation is to build up your retirement assets within investment accounts such as your 401k or IRA. When you retire you then withdraw the money from those retirement accounts hoping that you do not outlive your retirement money.
Accumulation Can Also Be About Locking In
A different way of supplementing your retirement investments may be to also look at other types of retirement solutions. You can accumulate retirement assets by “locking in” on life insurance premiums or annuity rates.
You are generally younger and more healthy during your working/accumulation years. Use your youth and health to your advantage by purchasing life insurance and annuities at the absolute lowest prices possible. In some cases you can lock in those prices for the rest of your life. Being open about planning for retirement does have its advantages.