Planning for Retirement

An important concern about growing wealth is to provide for an adequate retirement with the secondary goal of leaving some sort of estate to heirs. Studies show that 80% of us are not investing enough to meet this goal. My experience tells me, you should be planning to live the same lifestyle, to maintain the same spending level, in retirement as you did in your working years. I also believe you must plan for 30 to 35 years of retirement which means many of us will have more retirement years than working years. Therefore, in addition to investing for children’s education, you must be investing for eventual retirement years.

I mentioned starting your retirement savings plan when you start your first job as the longer you wait to get serious about retirement saving and planning, the less likely you are to achieve the kind of retirement years about which you have dreamed.

When planning your retirement, you should manage the following:

You cannot start saving for retirement too early
Always contribute to employer matching plans at least to the matching level
Maximize your contributions to employer provided, tax-advantaged plans
Supplement with maximum contributions to individual tax-advantaged plans
Understand the difference between traditional IRAs and Roth IRAs
Understand the role of annuities in retirement planning
Plan to enter retirement debt free - no mortgage
Develop a plan to cover health care costs in retirement
Do not, do not, do not depend on Social Security