Building A Flexible Federal Employee Retirement Plan
Building a Flexible Retirement Plan
In order to make anything work from the simplest to the most complex venture, one must have a plan. One of the most important components of the plan is flexibility. Life changes, people change, and as we know – the world and what makes it run – the economics of supply and demand – impacting the way we live also changes.
Getting ready for retirement requires tremendous personal investment, both financially and emotionally. There is a laundry list of things we need to do in order to move closer to our retirement goals. As we construct our laundry list of things to do, we will compare the list to what we have already done and what we need to do going forward.
Obviously, one of the first things we need to do is develop a plan, a sort of action plan for our lives. Developing an action plan requires no real technical expertise or fancy charts and drawings. It is your own personal plan whose primary criterion is to develop a plan and stay with it. No matter how wonderfully constructed your plan, if you simply toss it aside, it is useless.
We emphasize the need to be flexible in your retirement plan, so that if you have to change some things, rearrange some items or redo it altogether, not to worry. Just don’t abandon your plan. Having a retirement plan is like having a roadmap to your desired destination. You may discover that you can take a number of alternate routes to your destination, but nonetheless, you have a roadmap that you know most emphatically leads you to where you want to go.
When you are building a PLAN for your retirement future, always remember what FLEXIBLE means to help you stay on track. F – Financial literacy is a must. You gain that literacy just as you gain any other body of knowledge – read, inquire and ask questions. L – Liabilities – know what they are and work on eliminating as many of your liabilities as possible before you retire. E – Earnings – know that your earnings will be lower than when you were an active employee, respond accordingly. X- Xceptions – there are none. We don’t get to make Xceptions to the importance of having a plan and say ‘I don’t need one”.
Everybody needs a plan in order to successfully get where they need to be. I – Invest in your future by prioritizing what your goals are and sticking to a plan that will help you reach them. B – Budget – if you have shied away from living on a budget in the past, as you move into retirement, living on a budget is your best bet to making sure your resources outlast you.
If you very temporarily step-off the train, you must immediately make plans to get back on board, it is your future. L – Lower – E- Expenses. Lower your expenses by taking advantage of services offered to seniors – eating out, travel, hotel accommodations, and grocery shopping discount-days for seniors, senior home repair programs, and homestead exemption programs for seniors.
FLEXIBLE might only look like an 8 letter word, but it packs a whole lot of punch for getting ready to retire well.
P. S. Always Remember to Share What You Know.
For information on your TSP.gov and how it will impact your retirement – Click HERE
