Retirement Lessons Straight From a Retirement Pro

With experience for 40 years, what he has learned from other people’s retirement experiences as well as his own contributes to his ability to offer helpful lessons. Here are some useful tips on retirement (as told by this retirement pro).

Money is somehow always on your mind. Yes, even if your sources of retirement income are generous and you are very well prepared, money is always on your mind. This could be due to the fact that income resources become finite, and there are no do-overs.

The ability to rebuild savings remains essential in retirement. Your financial future can hardly go without being put on the line with an unexpected yet significant expense from your main retirement savings. This means that outside of your regular retirement plan, you have to have some emergency money put away. Not only that if the emergency fund gets used, but it also needs to get replenished.

The three-legged stool of retirement. The three include; company pension, personal savings, and social security. That has since changed, putting into consideration Americans in the private sector, for them there’s no company pension instead, in its place is a 401(k) plan. The current legs are Social Security, other savings, and employer plan savings. It is safe to have a good amount of savings that go well beyond what you will accumulate in your employer’s plan.

Maintenance of lifestyle. This is not as easy as it looks. Your lifestyle can try to be maintained by a certain level of frugality. In addition, instead of taking the standard advice of aiming to replicate 80% of your salary, it is better to try 100% of your salary.

Inflation. This concern is genuine; there is no escaping inflation everywhere from property taxes, rent, and healthcare spending. It would be advisable to just have an untouched amount of money growing somewhere and only touch it when you need to offset expenses later in retirement.

Transition. Moving from professional life to retirement is anything but easy. In the blink of an eye, a routine that you had for the longest time is now suddenly gone.

“Friends” will go. Your relationship may seem like more than business once you work with people for many years. Let’s face it; once you retire, you lose grasp of the authority and influence you once had. Your real friends will stay, but your value to others will no longer be there, and the same applies to them.

Retirement has and end. Not to pop anyone’s bubble, but retirement does come to an end. During our careers, we look forward to retirement, and when retirement comes knocking, we look forward to waking up. It can be depressing when you receive notices of former co-workers passing. But just keep living each day.