Imagine never running out of money— Having a monthly income that provides for all your expenses including food, entertainment, and gifts for the rest of your life and your spouse’s life. Imagine having funds beyond your income that can be dedicated to having fun and enjoying retirement. Imagine waking up to find out a world tragedy has struck and the foreign markets have crashed. Others are watching their funds plummet and scrambling to contact their advisors while you sit secure. You have a guaranteed income supporting your everyday lifestyle and no reason to worry about the financial markets to pay your bills.
That’s what our upcoming blog series is about—satisfying your everyday obligations so you can sit back, relax, and enjoy your retirement.
It would be much easier to prepare for retirement if we understood the distribution phase.
As we get closer to retirement, we begin to imagine what our lives will be like. How we will pay our bills and how much money will we have to spend on vacations and hobbies are generally considered. Most of us have been contributing to a retirement plan through an employer and/or independently. Many of us have multiple homes and have developed hobbies we would like to carry with us into retirement. After all, isn’t that what retirement is all about, doing what we want and enjoying what we have accumulated?
You begin to review your retirement programs, pensions, Social Security, investments, personal savings, and so on. Your advisor who has helped you get where you are projects your funds to carry you into your 90s. Your financial concerns are health insurance and Medicare, not running out of money, Social Security, assistance while aging, estate planning, and taxes.
Over the next week we will release a blog series linked below covering 5 Steps to Income Planning:
- Annualizing Expenses and Considering Inflation
- Organizing Incomes—Social Security, Pension, Etc.
- Calculating Income Shortfall or Surplus
- Establishing Lifetime Income Streams
- Finding a Qualified Professional to Create Income Streams 4 Life
These 5 tips to income planning should help you think through the process of organizing yourself for the distribution phase, known as retirement. For 35 years or so, you have focused on accumulating and growing your funds. Now, utilizing the funds to provide the necessary services to last a lifetime is the issue. Leaving a legacy to children may also be desired, but it can conflict with avoiding the uncertainty of running out of money and preparing for the potential challenges life throws at you as you grow older. No one can tell you exactly how to accomplish what you are trying to do. The subject is often left ambiguous and open ended.
The intent of this series is to help answer some of the questions you have and provide suggestions, ideas, and direction, leaving you with less ambiguity.
