Three Success Questions

I want to talk about the three retirement success questions. You know these are things you should be asking yourself as you head into retirement or maybe very early on in your retirement. Number one sounds simple, but what income do you want or need? I’m amazed at all the times I’ve seen new people come in and they haven’t thought about this yet or have any idea of where to come up with this number. You know sometimes folks are like well I don’t know or I don’t even know how to come up with that. Well two things you can kind of do, what are you living on today? And what expenses may go away when you retire or maybe what expenses may be added when you retire. Or the other way to do it is the dreaded budget. I know most folks don’t traditionally live on a budget. Many do, but many don’t. But to sit down and work through that and see what the expenses are going to look like. You’ve got to get to the bottom of knowing what your needs are so you know what kind of income, what kind of lifestyle you’re going to have in retirement. Once you know what that income is or the desires that you want, then what sources do you know are going to be coming in? We call that guaranteed forms of income. Social Security is an example. I know there’s questions out there, is it really guaranteed? But we have to assume the government, it’s backed by that and there’s going to be some guarantees to having that Social Security. Second, pensions. You know maybe you’re fortunate enough to have a pension from a previous employer, your current employer. What does that look like? And then also maybe you have an annuity from a previous employer like an old TIAA or something like that that’s going to be spitting out some income for you going down the road. So those are the things we know. All right, so you know what you want. You know the sources that are going to be coming in. The third question, what do I do with the difference? Likely there’s going to be some difference there where what you have coming isn’t going to be quite what you want or what you need doing that. Where do I get that? Well that traditionally comes from your retirement savings, so 401Ks, 403Bs, IRAs, Roth IRAs. All those different categories out there or maybe you have like brokerage accounts, non-qualified accounts, stuff like that. But how do we build that to generate a paycheck for you on a consistent basis to get back to those goals that you have? Because let’s face it, in retirement your income is your lifestyle. That’s going to allow you to do the things you want to do and do all those things you’ve worked so hard for in your lifetime. You know oftentimes we lose sight that all this savings, it’s responsibility is to generate a paycheck. Retirement is like 20-30 years of unemployment. You want to make sure you have a plan laid out for your income in those unemployment years, right? So if you don’t have an income plan and you haven’t thought about these success questions, give us a call. We’d love to talk to you about these and hope for you to plan to retire well.