Greetings! I trust that this will find you well and enjoying life.
Business owners and CEOs have written business plans. Ship captains chart their courses on nautical maps and doctors have written treatment plans for their patients. What these and most successful people all have in common is that they have written plans of action that provide them with goals and direction for a clearly defined outcome – written plans that likely lead to the results they expect to achieve. Planning for retirement is just as critical and no different from any other detailed process or objective.
Whether you’re in your forties, fifties or sixties it’s time to create a written retirement plan. It’s never too late and never too early, but if you’re just five to ten years out from retirement it’s crucial that you do so. Often spouses assume that they share similar retirement
goals and objectives. However, they miss opportunities because they never take the time to discuss or create the formal planning necessary for a secure, satisfying second phase in life. It may be hard to imagine, but many people spend more time planning summer vacations than they do retirement.
Creating a plan can be an eye-opening experience. It can show that yes I do have enough for retirement, or no I don’t and I need to make sacrifices now. It helps you to make hard informed choices. It allows you to be in reality of where you are financially and provides you with the strategies and tools to get to the place you really want to be. Written retirement plans provide you with power. Knowledge is power.
A written plan may help you to be a better saver, plus it can have a big impact on how you secure you are in retirement. You may be like others who retire and are afraid of spending their money believing they may run out, so they hoard it. Without a written plan that’s monitored and updated periodically you’re likely to have a lot of anxiety about what can happen. The written plan helps take away that anxiety. If you don’t have a plan you can blow through your savings or you might spend too conservatively and have a retirement that’s really below what you deserve and what you worked for all your life.
Foundationally, the written plan should tell you how much it’s going to take to maintain the lifestyle you want in retirement and provide you with a course of action to achieve it. It may also consider income planning, social security strategy, tax planning as relates it to retirement, estate planning, legacy planning and healthcare planning involving Medicare and long-term care.
Our planning process always begins by listening to our client’s dreams, goals, and vision for the future. Once we know you and who you are, we can begin to provide you with options and strategies relating to you. Options that allow you to feel secure about the future. We know that no client is the same and we tailor your plan to utilize your particular resources, goals, and needs.
According to the Retirement Research Institute at Boston College, having a written retirement plan dramatically increases your odds of experiencing the retirement you dream about in your working years. With retirement, failure to plan is planning to fail. Written plans make all the difference.
If we can help in any way with this information or anything else related to retirement don’t hesitate to contact us.
Best regards,
Jeff Christian CFP, CRPC
Worry often gives a small thing a big shadow.
Swedish Proverb