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Planning for retirement is something every adult should be thinking about. No matter your age, starting your savings plan and building out your retirement path can go a long way to bringing you confidence once the moment comes for you.
In this blog we wanted to highlight 5 Retirement Planning tips that we like to cover with our clients. These tips cover a wide variety of topics and are just a subset of the many talking points one can have with their financial professional when discussing the topic.
- Define your goals: Create a plan that is built around what you want to do in retirement. Do you want to travel more, move to another state, buy a vacation home, spend more time with family? Having your goals clearly defined will help you create a plan that hopefully helps to get you where you want to go.
- Start Early: Building a plan for retirement and starting to save early in your career can be a huge help to realizing your retirement dreams. When we speak with our younger clients, we always check on a few different topics:
- Are you contributing to your employer sponsored retirement plan (if applicable).
- If they have an individual retirement account and what their contribution rates to that account are.
- When are they planning on retiring? This will help us to start to build a plan for them. The earlier you start planning the longer the time horizon to adjust it as you start to approach your desired retirement age.
- Build your savings in multiple buckets: The old saying rings true here, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. When speaking with clients, we like to encourage them to build out their retirement savings using a variety of accounts as it could help with their financial picture down the line. For example, utilizing both taxable and non-taxable accounts to build your wealth overtime may be able to help ease your tax burden in retirement. If you believe you might be in a higher tax bracket in retirement, setting up and investing money in a Roth account, if you are within the income limits, can help you build savings which will be tax free after you reach the age of 59 ½.
- Estimate your expenses: When building out your retirement plan, it is important to gauge what your expenses may look like after you have stopped working. Without a steady stream of income coming through your paycheck, bills may feel like they are piling up quicker than they did through your working years. Medical expenses are generally one of the higher costs for people in retirement so having a good understanding of what type of insurance you are going to be utilizing during that time frame is imperative. We like to sit down with our clients and go over a monthly budgeting sheet with them to give us an estimate of what their expenses may look like. It does not have to be perfect but having a framework can go a long way to bringing you confidence in your planning.
- Review and Revise where necessary: It is important to frequently monitor how your retirement plan is coming to fruition. In life, it is great to have a plan for everything but of course, things happen that can throw that plan off track. Adjusting your plan when it is thrown off track can help to keep you on your retirement path. When we work with clients, we like to have a multiple touch points per year to understand how their current financial situation is and also check in on if their retirement planning is staying the course.
The Final Word:
The most important thing we would like to stress is that creating a retirement plan can be extremely helpful as you carry on through life. Many times when working with new clients, they come to us with a sum of money and ask “do I have enough to retire?” The answer isn’t of course so clear cut because everyone’s situation is different. This is why tailoring a plan that is fit to your wants and needs is important.
Thanks for reading! Do you have questions you would like us to discuss here? Click this link to let us know and we hope you found this helpful!
https://www.rocklinewealth.com/ask-an-advisor
Disclaimer:
Rockline Wealth Management (RWM) is a registered investment adviser located in Plainview, NY. RWM is registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Registration of an investment adviser does not imply any specific level of skill or training and does not constitute an endorsement of the firm by the Commission.
The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.