We all have financial needs of some kind. The financial needs of a young person starting their career differs from the person well established in theirs. And the financial needs of families with young children differ from those families with grown children.
But one financial need we all have in common is the need to save for our retirement. You can get loans for your child’s college education and mortgages for your home purchases; but you cannot get a loan to pay for your retirement.
If you plan on reaching retirement someday, you will need to invest for your retirement…no one can do that for you.
Retirement may be a long way off, but you do a great disservice to yourself and your loved ones if you do not plan ahead for your retirement years.
Retirement Calculators To The Rescue
The purpose of a retirement calculator.
- When planning for your future retirement, you need a dollar amount.
- The dollar amount is your estimate of how much money you think you will need to live on in retirement.
- Without an estimated dollar amount to shoot for, how can you plan?
- By knowing how much money you will need, you will be able to plan your investments to help match your targeted need.
- A retirement calculator will help you set your estimated target so that during your working years you can invest with that target in mind.
Take advantage of a retirement calculator.
- Most retirement calculators have you input basic information about your current finances and goals.
- Most retirement calculators allow you to be anonymous due to the private information they require.
- Information a retirement calculator will require can include: your current income, current savings, current debt, retirement income goals, amount of money your are currently investing into your 401k retirement account and other retirement accounts.
- With that information the retirement calculator can determine if you are on track or not with your retirement investment goals.
- If you are not on track, the calculation will show you where you need to make adjustments to get you on track towards your retirement target.
- The retirement calculator wants to show you whether your retirement income from your 401k retirement account and IRA accounts will be enough to support you throughout your entire retirement.
- If all of your retirement investments are not enough – guess what you get to do at retirement keep working!! And who really wants to keep working when their family and friends are retired.
So start today getting ready for tomorrow. Find a retirement calculator to determine where you are today and where you need to adjust if necessary. Invest as much as you possibly can into your 401k retirement account and IRA accounts.
Or you could always find a job that you really, really, really like so that you can work there forever.
