-How much money do you need to retire, or as I like to say, stop working for money, and not be at risk of outliving your financial resources?
-How much money do you need to retire, or as I like to say, stop working for money, and not be at risk of outliving your financial resources?
The IRS has produced a really good virtual small business tax workshop for small business owners. I’m somewhat surprised, as the IRS productions are usually pretty bland, to put it mildly. They seem to really be sharpening their game and this latest attempt is easy to follow and very informative.
Questions about how to file small business taxes; working from home; retirement plans, you name it- it’s all here in 9 different modules. If you’ve been hoping to feel more empowered around the business side of your small business-now’s your chance.
There’s a large amount of investors sitting on the sidelines, parking their money in treasury bills, CD’s or money market accounts too scared to make a move. For those that lost a lot of money during the recent crash and need their investments to grow in order to fund their retirement, this may not be your best move.
If you lost a lot of money in the recent crash, you were probably too heavily invested in stocks. Now’s the time to take a good and honest look at what happen, see what lessons you learned from the experience and make plans for the future. The past is just that, the past and now it’s time to plan ahead.
Now that the dust has settled from the Great Recession and people are finding the courage to look at their investment statements once again, a new reality is setting in for many people as well as many new questions. How do I retire with enough financial security so I don’t have to worry about money and how long will it take to rebuild my nest egg?
It’s hard to know how long it will take for the stock market to fully recover and the same holds true for the real estate market. Even jobs that once felt very secure no longer feel that way in this post crash economy. With so much out of your control, what can you control? The answer is and always will be your spending.
It’s hard to predict what the economy will look like two, five or ten years from now. It’s even harder to predict what the stock and bond markets will look like down the road. So with all that uncertainty, it’s better to focus on what you do have control over vs. what you have zero control over.
And that brings me to the “number”. By the number, I’m referring to the amount of wealth you need to accumulate by the time you’re ready to retire and stop working for money. I believe this number is vitally important to not just your financial well being, but to your overall well being as well.
Is this a bear market rally we’re witnessing in the stock market or the beginning of a stock market recovery? Do I get back into the market now or wait a little longer? If I do get back in, what do I buy?
These are just a few of the many questions I’ve been asked recently. After the recent drubbing we received from the stock market crash, these are not decisions to be made lightly.
As the global economy continues to implode and the stock market reaches new lows, lots of baby boomers are wondering about their retirement plans. If you watch the talking heads on Sunday morning TV shows, which I admit I do regularly, you’ve seen a zillion commercials on preparing for retirement. Most commercials show the happy couple sailing off into the sunset, not a care in the world because they followed this plan or that plan. It seems like well meaning retirement advice they’re dispensing. But BEWARE, there are a lot of illusions, delusions and downright lies about retirement that can be dangerous to your retirement well-being.
As long as you have enough money saved up, your retirement will take care of itself. This is the biggest and most dangerous lie about retirement. Of course you need enough money saved up to have a secure retirement, but this is only one aspect of many that need to be considered for a thriving not just surviving retirement. Focusing only on the tangible financial aspects of retirement and ignoring the other, less tangible, “must haves” is a prescription for disaster.
With the stock market sinking daily, it’s hard for many investors to stomach the thought of putting money back into the market. That’s totally understandable. As a short-term strategy, many people are keeping their cash in money market accounts or short term savings accounts. If that helps you sleep at night, then that’s what you need to do. But eventually, things will stabilize, markets will go back up, and you’ll need to start planning for your prime years. With average life expectancy at 90, earning less than 2% on your investments over the long term is a riskier strategy than you might imagine.
Most people, even with the best of intentions, usually spend pretty close to what they were spending prior to retirement. Many of my clients that have officially stopped working for money actually are surprised to discover that they are spending more than when they were working full-time. This is why planning for the prime years of your life, formerly known as the golden years, (prime just sounds better), is so essential to future financial security.
