The main goal of a successful retirement program is to ensure you will have sufficient financial resources to maintain or improve your lifestyle during your retirement years. If you want to travel and make more purchases in retirement, you will have to save more. How much you want to save will depend on how you want to spend your retirement.
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Save Enough
According to some financial planning experts, to do so, you will need to save enough so that your retirement income is in the range of 70-80% of your pre-retirement income.
You will need a higher percentage if you plan to improve your standard of living. If you have more expenses in retirement than before retirement, your retirement income may have to be more than your pre-retirement income.
Be Sure to Plan
Building such savings requires careful planning, which includes assessing your current assets, the number of years left until retirement and how much you'll be able to save during your pre-retirement years.
In this article, we list some of the steps to take when implementing your retirement program.
Determine What You Will Need
One popular approach to retirement planning starts with determining how much you'll need to finance your retirement years.
This is usually based on projected cost-of-living increases, the number of years you're likely to spend in retirement and the lifestyle you plan to lead during retirement.
But projecting an amount isn't an exact science: the years you spend in retirement may be more or less than you project, and the same may go for cost-of-living increases.
However, a comprehensive outlook and some thought will help to provide realistic projections.
Here are some factors to consider:
Your projected everyday living expenses
Your life expectancy
Your projected costs
Your resources other than your retirement savings that cover unplanned expenses; such resources may include long-term care insurance, annuity products and health insurance
Your property: if you own your home (i.e. have no outstanding mortgage balance), or will own your home by the time you retire, you have the option of selling it or obtaining income through a reverse mortgage.
Your intended lifestyle during retirement: do you plan to lead a quiet retirement or do things like travel around the world and other activities that may be expensive?
Take Stock of What You Have
If you are not a financial planning expert or don't have the time necessary to implement and manage a retirement program, you may need the help of a competent financial planner.
If you do go to see one, he or she will need to assess your current financial status in order to design a realistic and successful retirement program.
You therefore need to provide detailed information about your financial affairs.
Documents your financial planner may need generally include:
Copies of most recent account statements, including regular savings, checking, retirement savings, annuity products, credit cards and other debts
a copy of amortization schedules or summaries of any mortgages
Copies of your tax return for the last few years
A copy of your most recent pay stub
Health and life insurance contracts
A list of your monthly expenses
Any other documents you think may be important to your financial planning process
It's one thing to figure out how much you need during retirement, how much you need to save and what account you will use to do so. But the primary challenge is finding the extra funds to put toward savings, especially if your budget is already spread thin. For many, this means changing spending habits, re-budgeting and redefining needs vs wants.
Invest
Once you are able to allocate a part of your monthly income to your savings, you need to think about investing those amounts. Investing puts your money to work for you and usually gives you the benefits of compound interest. Investing is integral to ensuring your retirement program meets your goals. And the earlier you start, the easier it will be for you to do so.
The types of investments that are suitable for your portfolio will depend primarily on your risk tolerance. Generally, the closer you are to your targeted retirement date, the lower your risk tolerance will be. The idea is that those who have a longer time until retirement have more opportunity to recoup any losses that may occur on investments. So someone who is in their early twenties may have a portfolio that includes more high-risk investments such as stocks. Someone who is in his or her sixties, on the other hand, will have a higher concentration of investments with guaranteed rates of return such as term deposits or government securities.
Regardless of risk tolerance, it is important to achieve an appropriately diversified portfolio, one that maximises return for its determined risk.
Get Professional Help
If you do not already have a competent financial planner, or you are shopping for a financial planner, it's important to shop around. In addition, be sure to check the background of the financial planners that you plan to interview.
The Bottom Line
This article discusses some of the fundamental groundwork for ensuring your retirement program is successful - but this is only an overview. The underlying details will take time and effort for you to determine and execute. And the steps we outline above do not make up a catch-all solution. Your financial planner should be able to help ensure that all important factors are considered. In the meantime, don't be afraid to conduct some research on your own, by visiting websites, such as the ATO Superannuation web page, which provides useful information and calculators for retirement planning.
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