Financial Planning Grow Your Money Safely to Fund Your Dream Retirement |
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Imagine what you’ll do once you’re retired. What do you see? If you’re like most people, you probably envision your retirement as a time when you can finally pursue your dreams. You can finally take the vacations you’ve wanted to take for years, and can go to all those places you’ve only dreamed about. You might want to play golf, and maybe travel to try out all the best golf courses in the country – or even the best ones in the world. Then again, maybe you are mostly looking forward to spending more time with your loved ones. Maybe you just want to relax.
But whatever your dreams may be, they will require money to come true. They won’t just happen. You have to plan for them. And if you want to give your money a chance to grow enough so you can turn all your retirement dreams into reality, you better start right away.
The process is actually pretty simple. You’ll have to think through and answer a few basic questions:
- What kind of retirement do you want?
- When do you want to retire?
- How long will your retirement last?
Once you have answered those questions, it’s time to crunch some numbers. And at that point, you’ll find it very helpful to have a qualified professional at your side. Experienced retirement planning professionals will know how to estimate your expenses. They’ll know how to figure out how much you will need to finance your dream retirement.
And, very importantly, they will be able to identify any potential gap between your retirement goals and where you’d be headed if you didn’t make any adjustments. And they’re able to do all that while also factoring in inflation and taxes.
Once they know what you have to work with, they can come up with a plan, or several plan options, for closing that gap. If you’re lucky, you won’t have to make too many changes. If you’re less lucky, you may have to increase your savings. Either way, your age, your risk tolerance and your objectives will be crucial when it comes to choosing the type of investments vehicles that will help you reach your goals.
For most people we help, they usually include some retirement vehicles that will help you save taxes, such as 401(k)s, Roth and Traditional IRAs and yes, even insurance. Your portfolio may also include stocks, bonds, mutual funds, annuities of all types and/or some combination of these. Once you and your financial planning advisor have made a decision to go ahead with your retirement plan, you’ll establish goals and objectives, and you’ll set up a way to implement and monitor them.
Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? But in reality it’s really not. That’s because “life always gets in the way.”
So you’ll need to make sure you have help. And when it comes to decide who to hire, you’ll probably wonder whether you should hire a fee-only advisor or one who seems less expensive at first – until you discover that they get commissions on what they sell you.
Trust me. You’ll want the kind of objective advice that only a fee-only advisor can and will provide. And working with such a fee-only advisor will not only help you identify, implement and monitor your goals, but will also provide education and coaching along the way as you work your plan towards making your retirement dreams come true.
