Retirement planning for where you will live
Maybe you’re eager to leave your job behind. And maybe your financial planner says you have all the money you need. But are you truly prepared for the emotional impact of what may well be the biggest change of your life? Whether you’re retiring a year or two from now or thirty or forty years in the future, it’s never to early to think about who’s going to take care of you when the time comes. The goal, of course, should be to take care of you. After all, no one wants to be a burden on their children and poverty is never pretty. In today’s world, consumers are living beyond their means and debt is piling up fast. It’s not uncommon for a family to live from paycheck to paycheck, spending all they make on all they owe. But what happens during retirement? What happens when your income is no longer in the form of a weekly paycheck? If you haven’t been preparing for retirement don’t worry. A written financial plan does not imply or guarantee wealth, of course;nor does it ensure that you will reach your goals. Yet that financial plan does give you an understanding of the distance between your current financial situations (where you are) and where you want to be.
Retiring without a financial plan is an enormous risk; retiring with a financial plan that hasn’t been reviewed in several years is also chancy. A relationship with a financial advisor can help to bring you up to date about what you need to do, and provide you with more clarity and confidence when it comes to the financial future.
Many people neglect to plan for where they wish to live upon retirement. There are growing trends of retirees moving to certain communities. This is all well and good. The fact is that there is a growing trend among retirees to migrate to certain population centers. The problem is that most people who retire live on limited budgets and can’t afford the high dollar real estate that is part and parcel for these areas. One solution to that is to decide where you’d like to retire and buy real estate in that area early. Once you’ve purchased a property in the area you can make the rounds and get a good comparison for the value of goods and services in the area compared with what you are accustomed to. You can add the difference in your calculations for what you will need when making your retirement plans. Failing to do this can result in some very sad situations many retired people find themselves in. These could include living in sub standard and unsafe housing and not having enough money left after paying the rent to cover the cost of food and medication much less other needs that may be encountered.
Make sure you have enough money set aside to take that cruise every spring or fly up to see the grand kids two or three times a year. You want to make sure that you can enjoy your retirement or you will find endless days of staring at the television. What fun is that? The costs of living in this country from one region to the next can be significantly different. If you do not consider where you will be living upon retirement when calculating the numbers you are doing yourself a great disservice. This is definitely something you will want to discuss with your financial planner before it is too late to make the changes that will affect your future and retirement needs. It is good to have dreams of where you’d like to retire but it is even better to take the steps necessary to make your retirement dreams a reality.
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