Retirement Planning Guide

Hey welcome to this segment on retirement planning guide. I’m going to be able to give you 10 things of punch list activities that you might want to do as you prepare for your retirement. As I see so many people that come in to our office. They get so excited about what retirement looks like and how that’s going to play out and all the things that they want to do. And I couldn’t help but think of a family trip that we went on last spring break. We had the opportunity to get my family, my wife Jody, my four kids, my parents and my best friend Aaron and we decided we were going to go on a cruise. And it was so exciting to think about everything that we were going to be able to do, how we were going to relax. And as we were preparing for that trip, there were a lot of logistics that we had to put into place. In fact, we made a punch list ourselves. And so we said, okay well here’s how much money we have. Now we’re going to have a little bit of budget for fun. What fun is out there? What activities can we do on the cruise ship? What activities can we do as excursions? You know what kind of memories do we want to make? And what do we need to prepare for? What happens if somebody gets sick? You know what kind of clothes do we need to bring? What does the dining look like at night? And quick side note, it was awesome. My kids sat for sometimes an 1.5-2 hours around a table and we just talked. It was phenomenal. But as we had that happen, you know we get into retirement planning. We’re saying okay, this is an exciting time for you. Let’s go through a punch list so that you can prepare as best. And even if you’re in retirement, this might still be a good punch list for you to go through. So the first one is we want to save regularly for your retirement. As you prepare for living, you know the last season of your life, you want to make sure that you run out of life before you run out of money. And so if you’re in the habit of regularly saving, that means that you’re not living on more than you make and you’ve created margin and cushion in your budget. And the people that have margin and cushion in their budget, have a different level of peace as they go through life like that. The next thing is to maybe maximize your 401K match. Too many times we see clients come in and maybe it’s a 401K, maybe it’s a Simple IRA. These have matched provisions to them. And the client simply isn’t taking advantage of that. And that could be for expenses are too high or spending and lifestyle is too much. But you know, that’s free money in that sense. So by you contributing to those retirement plans, you’re getting the match and a.k.a. the free money that’s helping you grow your investment accounts and help you prepare for retirement. So I would drill down. What is your match? Are you maximizing it? The next thing is to look at the different retirement account tax breaks. So if you know where you are in the tax brackets, are you in the 12% bracket? Are you in the 22%? The 24%? The 32%? What tax bracket are you in and which retirement account are you utilizing? Are you being tax efficient and are you becoming tax diversified? So those are important things to look at. The next thing, sometimes it might require you to open up a Traditional IRA or for tax planning, a Roth IRA. Right now the limits on that for a Traditional or Roth IRA is $7K per person, per year in 2024. And then if you’re 50 or older, you can go up to $8K per person. The next thing would be to carefully select your investment allocation. The market is just full of awesome investment options. And so as you learn about what the market is producing for your investment options, you’re going to want to make sure that your goals are aligned with the investments that you currently have. And there’s a lot of misalignment that we find. And so if you’re sitting there saying yeah, I’m not really sure I’m really that educated on what’s out there in the market. Obviously, we are an education first company. We’d love to be able to sit down in an individualized way. No pressure, no obligation. Just get to be that Coach along side of you and teach you and let you make the decisions based on you know, the information that you receive. The next thing, a lot of times as you’re preparing for retirement, you’re in your accumulation stage. And so you’re going to want to be very fee conscious. Know your fees. Know what you’re getting in return. Are there investment allocations that are less fees that would give you a better chance for accumulation? Again, we do this analysis all of the time. So feel free to use us as a resource or put it on your list and figure it out. If you go online, there are so many retirement planning tools. We have some of our favorites that we use to individualize called Retirement Analyzer. It’s a great way to bring a plan together. But there’s a lot of free tools out there. So you can see a big picture when you use those tools. The next thing is to boost your Social Security benefit, okay? So if you’ve been working for 35 years do you have your highest average 35 years or do you need to work a couple more years to kick out some of the lower income years. Finally, make sure that you’re signing up for Medicare on time, so age 65 if you’re not working. You’ve got a window there. And then if you continue to work, you have a couple of different options. Just be sure that you’re on those deadlines and how it applies to you. And then finally, making sure your assets know where to go. Having a great estate plan will make sure that you get to pass on only gifts, not the stress of you know, eventual death. I hope you have a great day. Thanks so much.