Pennies and dollars add up to big retirement savings

When you family budget is tight, saving for retirement can take a back seat. Those extra dollars can be earmarked for utilities, food or the house. Putting off saving for retirement can be detrimental. Even a dollar or two put towards retirement can help.

Small contributions to a retirement plan can make a difference. Over time, with the benefit of compound interest, those minimal amounts can grow. Finding a plan that fits your lifestyle, goals and ideals, every family can create a financial plan for their future.

Retirement expert, Jerry Golden, president of Golden Retirement Advisors, is the developer of Savings2Income, a website that offers information and tools to create plan for worry-free retirement.

Here’s Mr. Golden's tips how having such a plan helps the management of your retirement funds:

  • Identify all of the assets you consider to be retirement savings. Include assets held outside a rollover IRA or 401(k) that you believe will be necessary to support your retirement lifestyle. If you previously worked and were part of an employer sponsored retirement plan, keep track of those benefits, or better yet, if it is in a 401(k) plan, see if you can make a trustee to trustee transfer to a low cost tax-deferred Rollover IRA plan that you can control.
  • Get an honest assessment of how much retirement income these savings, together with Social Security, any pension, and wages post-retirement, will produce. If there’s a gap, consider increasing your savings rate.
  • Get most of your savings into tax deferred accounts. That may mean investing in a no load variable annuity with your after tax savings. 
  • With your savings identified, your gap measured and your accounts in the right place, decide whether or not you need professional help in designing an investment portfolio, including diversifying among types of investments, and selecting individual mutual funds or ETFs. You may need that help in particular as you begin making the transition from savings to income.
  • When selecting an advisor, make sure you agree with the plan that’s developed and the fees being charged. In this case, the long-term strategy is yours, but let the advisor make the “tactical decisions”, reserving your right to review the plan as often as you feel is necessary. If you go it alone, take the long term view and stay diversified.
No more excuses. Start planning and saving toward your retirement today.

4 comments:

  1. I love this. I made so many financial mistakes over the years it is a shame, except for the fact that I really did eventually learn some of the above lessons. When my spouse went to law school and then started work, we were lucky that I could support us so that he could pay that loan back and put the max away in his 401K. It is so hard to think in terms of the long haul, but I can tell you we have NO regrets about the totals in that account now!
    thanks,
    Mitch

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  2. Great advice - I think retirement savings is an easy thing to shove into the back of your mind but it really is important to plan early.

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  3. Great tips! I need to buckle down and figure out retirement now that I'm not contributing to a 401K anymore and working for myself.

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