When it comes to your retirement, you shouldn’t settle. Your retirement is your responsibility, and if your company’s plan is insufficient or nonexistent, you’ve got to find a way to make up for it.
Fortunately, you can solve the problem by turning to the other tax-advantaged investment options: individual retirement accounts (IRAs), SEP-IRAs or Keoghs (for the self-employed) or, in some situations, variable annuities. Here’s a breakdown of how each option works:
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Married couples have the most flexibility when it comes to claiming Social Security benefits. Knowing when and how to collect benefits can increase a couple’s lifetime retirement income by $100,000 or more.
Thinking about working beyond normal retirement age? Think twice.
Concerned you have not saved enough for retirement? Working longer and postponing retirement may solve several concerns – employed people continue to earn income and have a longer time frame to build their nest egg; also, during the time they are working, they are not drawing down funds from that nest egg as they would if they were retired. The third advantage comes if they decide to delay collecting Social Security benefits. An individual who waits until age 70, for example, collects an extra 32% in benefits compared with someone claiming Social Security at their normal retirement age of 66. On paper, it looks like a good idea. The problem is that for many people, life doesn’t work out according to plan.
If you’re in your 20s, “retirement” probably feels a lifetime away—or, with student loans and high rent, maybe even impossible. While it’s tempting to put future financial planning on the back burner, the small steps you take right now are more powerful than any you’ll take later.
Why? Because you have a financial superpower that your older, higher-earning self will envy: time.
Your 30s and 40s are, financially speaking, the most critical “power-building” decades of your life. Your career is advancing, your income is (hopefully) growing, but your expenses are likely growing, too, with new responsibilities like a mortgage, kids, and college savings.
It’s easy to feel like retirement is a distant problem. But the financial habits you build and the plans you make now will determine the shape of your future.
This shouldn’t be a source of fear. Think of it as an exciting opportunity. This is your road map to financial freedom. Let’s break down the priorities for each decade.
As you enter your 50s and 60s, you’re in the “pre-retirement” decade. The planning you do now is critical for a secure future. It’s time to shift your mindset from simply accumulating wealth to strategically creating a reliable, lifelong income.
This is the time to get realistic about your circumstances. A clear-eyed evaluation today allows you to make the financial and lifestyle adjustments necessary for a confident retirement. This checklist can help you organize your review and identify any gaps in your plan—gaps that a product like an annuity may be designed to fill.
Americans are living longer than ever, turning retirement planning into a complex puzzle. As you plan for a retirement that could last 20, 30, or even more years, you’re likely asking critical questions:
While every retirement plan is personal, one of the most powerful tools for addressing these concerns is an annuity. This guide will explore how annuities can provide a secure foundation for your retirement and look at other strategies that can complement your financial plan.
Whether you are a self-directed investor or your investments are completely managed by a 3rd party, chances are good that you feel that some level of improvement can stand to be made with the current performance of your investments. We all typically seek the same general objective: maximize our returns while protecting ourselves from downside risk. However, it has become increasingly difficult for some people to reach this objective as we are flooded by more information and faced with more investment alternatives. Fortunately, many investing fundamentals have remained unchanged, but problems and mistakes occur when you don’t take these fundamentals into proper consideration.
Putting aside savings from every paycheck requires a lot of discipline, which sadly most of us lack. But there are strategies to help you deal with this situation, and to be able to develop and commit yourself to a long term savings strategy. Below are a few ways in which you can begin to or increase your savings plan.
For decades, Americans considered 65 years old to be the year of Retirement. Over the past decade or so, we have witnessed a transformation in the views towards retirement and retirement ages due partly to demographic changes in the population (notably longer life expectancies) as well as changing (and worsening) economic conditions.
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