Here are some ideas to help you ensure that you are ready for retirement – the 60s and beyond.
In our retirement, we need to prepare well. We no longer have jobs, and we now live on a steady income. This applies whether we have a monthly entry or if we withdraw money from a lump sum in an investment account.
At age 70, the government began to require mandatory distributions of all tax-deferred retirement accounts, such as 401(k) or IRAs. There is a penalty for not withdrawing money, even if we feel we don’t need to use it. Our guard can tell us how much to withdraw each year.
We should invest our retirement money in vehicles that are conservative, and somewhat stable. This is the only way to ensure that the money will last as long as we do. This doesn’t mean that we divert all of our money into money markets, CDs, or bonds. The growth that these vehicles offer won’t be enough to keep up with inflation, and we’re likely to spend our money longer.
However, we need to understand, based on the growth of funds in the account, how much we can withdraw regularly without draining the account too quickly.
The best way to curb potential mistakes is to create a budget. Many people see a budget as a bad thing, but a budget is the key to maximizing your income.
This is also a good time to review all insurances to ensure that we are covered in each area.
Before retiring, we should find out what kind of medical coverage we will have after our termination of employment. Some employers offer full medical coverage after an employee has worked for several years. Some people retire for only the short time they need to get full medical benefits in retirement.
If our employer’s plan does not offer full coverage, we must find out what we need to do to get additional coverage.
Now is also the time to look at long-term care insurance. There is a high probability of needing long-term care at some point during our lives. As healthcare costs continue to rise, self-explanatory long-term care costs can greatly reduce the retirement savings we have accumulated.
There are several options available in a long term care insurance policy. We must review the options and choose what is best for our family.
We also have to update all plantation planning documents. This includes our life trust, advanced health care directives and power of attorney.
Someone should be assigned to handle our business if we are not able to do so. If we don’t address this critical issue, the courts can assign someone to handle it for us.
