What Does Retirement Mean to You?

What does retirement mean to you? One of the favorite parts of what I get to do everyday is meet with folks and talk about their dreams and goals of their retirement. You’ve worked 20, 30, 40, 50 years of your life and now comes a time where you get to enjoy the fruits of your labor. So what does it mean to you? Most every person I’ve talked to over the years it means something different to. And it’s really important to understand what that is and think about for you as you head into retirement because those goals and what that means for you is going to drive some of your investment decisions and determine maybe what types of products you should be using. What types of incomes you’re going to need, maybe even as far as tax planning. Maybe there’s specific tax planning that needs to be done because of what you’re trying to accomplish in retirement. Are you going to continue working at like a part time level somewhere? Some folks retire from their primary career because maybe it’s stressful or maybe their position is being eliminated, but they want to keep working at some level to do something. Maybe you’re going to be volunteering during that time and it’s going to consume a certain amount of your time. Maybe you’re caring for your grandchildren. Maybe your children are off working and you want to volunteer and help take care of the grandkids and do that. Maybe you want to travel the world. You know and so forth and see all of the places that you haven’t had a chance to see because you were busy working. So what are all those goals of what you want to do when you’re retiring? So that there is going to determine a lot of what is the purpose of your money. Some focus once again, they’re going to need that money as a lifestyle. There are people that are going to be using that, going to be doing various things. Maybe the purpose of your money is gifting. Gifting to your children. Gifting to charities or churches. Maybe you want to leave a bunch behind. So all of these various things are questions that you have to ask yourself when thinking about that. When you’re meeting with a Financial Advisor and talking about retirement planning, these are vital things that you need to be discussing early on because it’s going to determine a path for where you’re going to be looking, right? If I as a Financial Advisor don’t know things, how am I going to determine a financial plan for you? How am I going to put investment tools in place to make sure we’re meeting those goals and desires. Folks, these are really important things that are often overlooked when we get into the financial puzzle. Too often in this industry everybody wants to talk about the product. You know what they’re selling. What are performances like? Money is personal. Money is the fruit of how you’re going to get to a lot of things of what you’re able to do, right? And so if we’re not talking about the personal aspect of this, we’re really missing the boat on this. So make sure you’re having these conversations. We’d love to have them with you. So give us a call at the number on the screen so we can walk through and figure out what the purpose of your retirement funds are so you can plan to retire well.