Quit Worrying, Start Planning your Retirement

[resaikking]

“Be realistic about how much of your home equity might be available for retirement...you will always need housing.”

Remember you're facing a retirement that's probably going to be longer than your parents' and will involve more uncertainties. This new kind of retirement probably means there are many workers worrying about, instead of planning for, the future.

You can choose to stop worrying and start figuring. Not only will you come up with facts to work with, the chances are good you might change the way you save. The 2006 EBRI survey also found that 51 percent of people who tried to figure out their financial futures ended up changing their retirement savings plans.

If you are a married woman: In preparing for retirement, women face the very real possibility of spending part of their retirement years without the support of a husband - most likely through widowhood. The loss of a spouse can sometimes mean the loss or reduction of benefits that can place women in financial jeopardy. For that reason, women will need to focus on their financial resources as a single person as well as half of a couple.

Using the Pre-Retirement Assets/Savings Worksheet, consider filling them out as a couple and as a single person. Consider what happens to your Social Security and to retirement benefits if your spouse dies or you divorce. Know what assets you can count on. Check Social Security benefit documents, retirement plan documents, and wills. Remember that wills are important, but they may not provide the protection desired. Depending on the way assets are titled or the terms of a will, the money women believe they can count on may not be passed to the surviving spouse.

Next, you can estimate how much that money could be worth because it will probably grow - in the 10 to 15 years between now and retirement. The Pre-Retirement Assets/Savings Worksheet will help you project a 10 to 15-year total, which will help you estimate a 30-year total. Yes, it's just a guesstimate, because the further in the future you plan, the more that can happen. But the totals give you some idea of how much you may have for your retirement years. (People who are retired may want to skip this worksheet and focus on the information about ways to grow your money.)

In addition, this worksheet will let you see how much your money can grow by investing it in different ways. In fact, you will be able to assign different rates of return to different types of savings and to see how your decisions can impact the growth of your money over the next 10 to 15 years. Rates of return are simply the amount your money earns over a certain period.

How your money increases over time will depend on the nature of your investments, the rates of return, and other factors, such as the economy. One kind of investment, for instance, is a bond, which is often referred to as a "fixed income" investment because the interest rate is fixed. As an example, if you owned a bond with an original value of $10,000 and you got a 5 percent return (or yield) on your investment, your original investment would increase to $16,289 in 10 years.

[weblover78]

Thank you for the great article and I have started building my portfolio now and I wish I can spend my retirement nicely

[Asad]

Yeah! Good article. But, retirement is just unimaginable for me. I am too younger to think of it. However, My father is going to retire is six years.

[titaniumhijau]

Thanks for that article and i believe its really good for us. To be honest, i already have my plan if my age reach 30. I will retired early and do something about my project. Hope my plan will go smooth like i plan. Its my plan with my friends.

[elitesystem]

By taking advantage an IRA, you can make yourself a millionaire by the time you retire. An IRA is short for Individual Retirement Account for the noobs , which is a retirement account that allows your money to grow tax-deferred until you retire. Rather than paying for taxes on your investments each year, you pay taxes only when you take the money out, which you can do after age 59.

[pranith]

wow what an article about Retirement is great! I have seed seen lot of articles about retirment but this is the best amoung them and i am planing to retire from my job. I currently don't accumulate a lot of asset to retire but if I invest in stock market and make a good money I will be able to retire safety! I love to retire safety so i can travel around the world and visit many countries!