Everyone wants to have a comfortable retirement. A healthy retirement and to be able to take advantage of the free time they now have. Like pretty much everything else you can increase your chances of achieving these goals if you plan for retirement. The Secrets to Retirement Planning are pretty simple once you understand what they are. Plan financially, emotionally and look after your body as well. The fundamentals of meeting these goals is pretty straightforward:
- Sufficient funds to do the things you have always wanted to do
- Healthy bodies and minds
- Interesting and challenging things to do
If you have these three things, chances are all of the details will work themselves out and you will have a wonderful retirement. Sure there will be challenges along the way, family issues to deal with and surprises that you could not predict. However if you have dealt with the retirement planning issues of money, health and interests, you should be able to weather these small storms.
Secrets to Retirement Planning
Let’s take a look at these three areas in more detail.
Sufficient Funds
The answer for everyone is of course different. You need to have sufficient funds in your retirement to meet you basic needs for a safe and healthy life. Beyond that is what you really need to enable you to meet the retirement goals you have. Starting when you are younger and setting aside at least 10% of your salary every year in savings should get you to were you want to be when you are ready to retire.
Of course if you have lofty goals in mind , you will have to save more. Develop a plan based on your current lifestyle and spending habits. Calculate how much money you will need to save based on the year you will retire and the expected life span. Assume a conservative interest rate as well which will force you to save a bit more. With these basic tools you and plans you should find yourself in a good position come retirement.
Follow the basic rules of : diversify your investments, never put all of your investments in one basket, if it sounds too good to be true , then it probably is, and try not to chase speculative investments, invest for the long term.
Healthy Bodies and Minds
This is probably the easiest for many people. All you need to do is exercise the body as well as the mind to stay sharp and enable you to enjoy all of the things that life has to offer well into your old age. Too much of a good thing is also bad, so 3 days of exercise during the week for 30 minutes each time is probably sufficient for most people. Overdoing it, as in seven days a week marathon running for example is probably going to wear out your joints well before you normally would. Who wants to go through knee or hip operations with the associated immobility?
Swimming is an excellent low impact exercise and is great for sore knees and hips. Even if you are not a good swimmer, just getting out and being active in the pool is a great exercise. Consider some of the swim gym classes as well were you exercise in the water.
You also need to challenge the mind and keep it sharp. Working will help with this as long as your job requires some thought. Experts indicate that doing crossword puzzles, playing games, working on various projects will also help to keep the mind sharp. How about doing math to keep your mathematical skills high. You can impress the kids at the store by adding up your costs before they can punch it into the cash register. Did you ever notice that when the cash register is not working, most have no idea how to add!
Interesting and Challenging things to Do
If you catch yourself becoming a couch potato, you are probably headed in the wrong direction. One friend of mind, when asked what he was doing in retirement, he answered by saying he gets up in the morning, has his coffee, reads the paper and watches the grass grow! This is an indicator of someone who has no outside interests and is bored. Needless to say his friends were appalled. Fortunately for him, he was able to land some small contracts which will keep him going for a while, however he really needs to fine something interesting and challenging to occupy his time.
It really does not matter what it is. Go back to work, take up some hobbies, volunteer, travel, do something. The only important criteria is to make sure that you look forward to getting up in the morning to tackle what you have planned for the day. Of course if travel is on your list, you also need to be able to afford it as well.
Don’t wait start planning for your retirement when you are young and you will be sure to have a very successful enjoyable retirement lifestyle! Comments are welcome!