Am I Ready For Retirement?
Deciding When to Retire? Let Your Retirement Plan Guide You.
As they say, timing is everything. It’s certainly true when it comes to retirement. But how do you decide when to retire?
At Salud, we believe a comprehensive retirement plan can help. It should take your entire retirement life into account. This includes how to balance your healthcare and income needs with how you want to spend your retired years, and the timing that can best help you get to the retirement lifestyle you desire.
These basic questions can help you start planning for retirement:
Best steps to grow and protect your assets:
Identify the ideal time for you to retire
Find out when and how to take Social Security
Determine the amount of money you’ll need to retire to meet your ideal lifestyle standards
Calculate the rate of return you’ll need to earn on your investments to reach your financial goals
Creating a retirement plan starts with a cash flow analysis. This step in our process determines where your current retirement savings are in relation to your goal.
To begin, compile a list of the sources of income you will have once you retire.
These include:
Social Security
Pensions
Rental property income
Any income from projected part-time employment
Next, add together the expenses you’ll have when you’re retired.
Make sure to include travel and other parts of your desired lifestyle. These could include:
Car payments
Mortgages
Property taxes
Groceries and other everyday expenses
Insurance premiums
Tithing or charitable giving
Travel
Eating out
Club memberships, recreation fees, or hobby-related expenses
Subtract your anticipated expenses from your retirement income. Don’t be surprised if you find you have a deficit. That’s why it;s important to start planning now so that we can work together on an investment strategy that’s intended to grow your nest egg so you can retire with financial peace of mind.
The next step is to calculate the amount of money you need to support the retirement lifestyle you want.
We call this your Magic Number. It’s the estimated sum of money – taking inflation into account – you will need to meet your financial goals when you retire.
Armed with your Magic Number, you can figure out how many years it might take to reach that target and be ready to retire.