Calculating how much money you’ll need in retirement is an important starting point and the sooner you go through the exercise, the better.
If you use a retirement calculator and find out that you don’t have enough money, it’s better to discover the bad news 5-10 years before you plan to retire rather than 5-10 weeks before.
If you realise that you won’t have enough money well in advance, then you have time to develop a strategy to improve your situation. If you would like to get an idea of how your estimated retirement funds stack up, click here for a retirement calculator that you can use.
However if you’re serious about wanting to enjoy a secure, happy and satisfying retirement, you’ll need to consider some important lifestyle issues. Realistically we have to think about things like:
- Handling the changes that life in retirement will bring.
- Managing the transition from full time work to full or part time leisure.
- Our important relationships.
- Our purpose in life.
- Our health and wellbeing.
- Where we will live.
- What do we want to achieve in this new stage of our life
- Are mine and my partner’s goals similar or different
My retirement planning web site has a valuable FREE tool that can help you to prepare a more comprehensive plan for your retirement. We call it a “Whole of life” retirement plan and you can download it, at no cost by clicking here.
So if you use a retirement calculator, to figure out how your finances look and then use our comprehensive retirement plan to help you work through the important lifestyle issues, you will have significantly improved your chances of achieving a secure and happy retirement.
Paul McKeon
My Life Change