Are you ready for retirement?? Why would anyone below the age of 60 and full head of hair care about planning for retirement?
Is I was perusing through the internet I caught an interesting survey that came out on the topic of retirement and financial planning.
A 2009 National Consumer Survey on Personal Finance conducted by the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, Inc. is responsible for yielding the following results:
64 % of Americans have no financial strategy at all.
This includes: no plans to pay off debt, no goals to increase mortgage payment by $100 a month, no set age to retire at, no plans at all. I will be the first to admit that planning of any kind sucks- especially planning for retirement, something that won’t happen for another couple of decades. The thing is though, do you want to be that 60-something that is working just to pay the bills? It’s one thing if you love your job but what if you despise it?
Only 17% of American citizens have a written financial plan that is updated regularly.
This is the really tricky part. Many “financially conscious” people will write down a clear budget and set financial goals- once a year. I’m guilty of this myself. I will write out a detailed financial strategy but will seldom update it. If you want to be ready for retirement at a specific age, your financial plan needs to be updated meticulously and often. Yes often.
Setup a financial plan, unlike most people
The whole point of this blog is to help myself and the readers earn more passive income. Passive income is directly relating to financial planning because it is additional income that you can put towards you savings goals, retirement plans, credit card debt, mortgage, personal loans, etc. Through the process of increasing your passive income and having a clear financial plan, you will be better prepared for retirement than most Americans.
Have concrete goals that have a direct plan
I would recommend outlining clear girls that are directly related to a concise financial plan. It’s easy to say that you want to be debt free (pay off mortgage) by age 40 or retire by age 60, but how will you get there? What are your goals? What is your financial plan?
Why are you not planning for retirement?
At the end of the day you need to push all of the excuses aside and ask yourself why you really have not been planning for retirement? Maybe it’s because you are afraid of death. Maybe you are afraid of getting old and what will happen. Maybe you love your job so much that you can not fathom leaving it. Whatever the reason is, it’s important to pinpoint why you have not yet begun the process for planning for retirement.
Now I must ask you again- are you ready for retirement?