12 Great Things About Retirement

12 great things about retirement. You know US News did an article about this and they did a great job. And the article was written out actually all the back in April 2016 and it still holds true. But I laugh about it a little bit, one because I’m not going to talk about all 12. I’m going to summarize this for you today. But if I had one of our retirees next to me, I think of this and I thought is it really just 12. Obviously you can’t write an article, it would be endless. But if you’re already retired, I’m sure you can think of all the great things. And if you’re working toward retirement, I’m sure in your mind there’s all these different things out there that you hope and you look forward to in having that time of your life in retirement. But the one thing that was consistent with this article that I wanted to talk about today is time. You know while we’re working, raising families, whatever we’re doing with day to day life, oftentimes we’re you know often, I wish there was just one more hour in the day or trying to squeeze stuff in, right? Well in retirement a lot of times, time frees up and it allows you to do various other things that you weren’t able to do. Maybe it’s play with the grandchildren more. Maybe it’s travel. Maybe it’s volunteer. Maybe it’s picking up that hobby that you always wanted to do. But again, it’s time. Now that can be a positive and it can also be a negative. Some folks get into retirement and they have too much free time and then there gets to be some boredom sets in sometimes. And then they’re looking to fill that time. Again, there’s so many opportunities out there. But the take away to this today is remember those years if you’ve already retired or you’re thinking about it is leading up to retirement. Start setting those goals for yourself. You know jot those down on a piece of paper. You know often times when we physically write things down, it entrenches in our mind better and it helps us try to accomplish those later in life. So as a retiree, what are those things that you want to do in retirement and jot those down. It’s important that your Financial Advisor knows those goals. Why is that? Because your money should be able to be strategized to help meet those goals in retirement. And you might say well Art, what does spending time with my grandchildren have to do with you and your financial planning? Well it might be a lot. You know we want to make sure that you have that longevity on your side from a financial situation. To be able to offer help maybe to those children or grandchildren and is that a goal of yours? Again, financial products are tools to help you have strategies to meet these goals that you so want to do. So when you’re thinking about retirement and what it may mean to you or even if you’re already retired and you’re thinking through this, again lay out those goals that you have for yourself or your family and jot those down. We’d love to sit down with you here and have a session to be able to talk through this with you. It’s a lot of fun for us to walk through this and help you work through that. Once we’ve got those goals laid out, then we can start to talk about financial strategies with income planning and tax planning, estate planning, health care planning. All of these different resources, start plugging that in. And then we can get to the point where we can start putting those investments in place to better match up with all of those things. I hope that you are having fun of thinking of retirement or in retirement and if not, again give us a call. We’d love to help you plan to retire well.