Balancing your financial resources with your life style
For most people, retirement is their ultimate goal. Have you spent time thinking about how to plan for your retirement? The earlier you start preparing, the easier it may be to retire in your chosen lifestyle.
Planning for retirement begins with developing a customized retirement plan that suits your needs. Here are some steps to consider:
Guide to Retirement Planning
- Determine Your Retirement Goals
- The Lifestyle You Want for Retirement
- Income Needed to Support That Lifestyle
- Living Expenses Affecting Your Retirement Income
- Understand expenses that decrease in retirement
- Review expenses that could increase in retirement
How do you envision your retirement years?
Understanding this will help you decide how much money you will need during retirement. You may have planned to do all of the things you were unable to do while working, or you want leisure time and rest. For most people; it’s somewhere in between leisure and reinventing your life.
Imagine your retirement lifestyle. Take your time and really think through the types of activities you would enjoy the most. This can be a fun exercise; helping to create a workable plan.
How Much Income Will You Need to Support That Lifestyle?
Retirement planning is understanding the balance between your financial resources and your envisioned lifestyle. For example, purchasing that larger home with the bigger monthly mortgage payment may mean that a lot less will be set aside for retirement. Maintaining this balance is one of the secrets to successful financial planning.
It’s a good idea to review your current expenses against the expenses you will have in retiremnet. Kaplan Insurance Services will be happy to help you with this evaluation.
Planning and saving is key!
There are some important factors to considered when determining what should be your savings goal: the age at which you would like to retire, your life expectancy, current investments, contribution rates and the impact of inflation.
The Good News
Most pension plans automatically factor in a cost of living increase, but keep in mind that these automatic increases, combined with your other income sources, may not be enough to protect your purchasing power after retirement.
The Bad News
Inflation continues to grow long after you stop working. If you retire at age 60 with a yearly income of $50,000, the purchasing power of this amount could drop by 45% in 20 years. Therefore, in 20 years you would need a yearly income of $90,300 to maintain the same lifestyle.
Inflation can have a dramatic effect on long retirement, so it is important that you plan for these effects. Kaplan Insurance Services will help you to evaluate your retirement income.
Indexed Annuities
Introduction
Annuities are taxed deferred investment vehicles that grow funds to provide income or wealth accumulation over time. This would include traditional and bonus annuities, multi-year guarantee annuities, indexed annuities, single premium immediate annuities and variable annuities.
An indexed annuity is a fixed annuity, either immediate or deferred, that earns interest or provides benefits that are linked to an external equity reference or an equity index.
An indexed annuity is different from other fixed annuities because of the way it credits interest to your annuity’s value. Some fixed annuities only credit interest calculated at a rate set in the contract; some credit interest at rates set from time to time by the insurance company. Indexed Annuities credit interest using a formula based on changes in the index to which the annuity is linked. How much additional interest you get and when you get it depends on the features of your particular annuity
Questions
Please call KIS Financial (240) 603 6406 and ask any questions you may have regarding our service. It’s FREE.
