How to strategically plan for your retirement

When it comes to planning for retirement you really have only a few choices to make for your future. Strategically speaking many people take the approach of “I hope it works.” People really never give their retirement a thought until it’s to late. When they decide it’s time for retirement is when people decide to take a look at their accumulation of wealth for a hard 30 to 40 years of work.

It’s at this time when people realize they have not set enough aside funds to carry them from retirement date to the end of their lives. Realizing that they have to embark on a new career just to compensate for their costs of living and the needs of the individual. Rising costs of living are enough to drive the value of your dollars to an all time low.

With a little patience, goal setting and a needs analysis for the individual needs and the needs of the family through the time of their retirement years. People expect that the flow of cash (income) will never stop; yet with a twist of fate, peoples lives can be affected in an instant. This is some of the areas people need to consider for their goal planning and choosing their “NUMBER”.

What’s the number you ask? The number is the “NET” income you need to achieve after retirement takes place. So let me ask you to stop for a minute and figure out your number. If your current expenses require a monthly budget of $5,000 while you are working; you’ll need to almost double it to cover your taxes, medical needs, and the standard costs of living.

By the time you retire you loose certain advantages, for example your home will be paid off so your tax deductions are reduced, medical costs increase since you loose your benefits at retirement. Certain perks that may have come with working suddenly disappear. What if your income suddenly stopped before you were ready? Have you ever given that a thought? If not you should, at a minimum you need three to six months of living expenses socked away to cover any sudden pitfalls in your income.

So how do you plan strategically for retirement and the normal bumps in the road that can pop up in your path at any given time during the travels of your life? Simply put you need to be proactive in your affairs and handle yourself first. This means you ALWAYS pay yourself first! Then you move about your personal business.

Set up your incoming income stream(s) to work for you instead of against you. The first priority is to take care of your retirement and pre tax dollar savings. By setting up your retirement savings you tackle two birds with one stone. A) you are creating a better future for you and your family; B) you are reducing your tax liability and therefor you are saving on the amount of income tax that you pay.

You need to check with your tax person or CPA to make sure you are not saving too little or too much. This way you are reducing your overall exposure to the tax laws and keeping more money in your pocket.

Secondly you need to make sure you are setting aside 10% of your income for personal expenses in the bank. You need to build a nest egg equivalent to three to six months of monthly expenses to shore up your confidence and set you ahead of the rest of America.

Once you have established these cash reserves you can pull back and your cash savings and start a new stream of income not based for retirement, these are accounts to keep liquid money available for quick access and no penalties. By the way liquid investments such as stocks, bonds, mutual funds, cd’s, and etf’s etc should not be used as the main source for your retirement. Strategically planning for your retirement means seeking out the best opportunities for capital appreciation, preservation, and conservation. What I am suggesting to you are solutions that aren’t commonly expressed or shown to people by the big financial institutions.

These large institutional financial companies are showing you a path for disaster, look at the dot com bubble bust, the most recent melt down in our economic system. People lost thousands to millions of dollars overnight. Stocks are risky in fact one of my mentors called it “legalized gambling” which in fact is the truth.

Your placing your hard earned dollars into a stock(s) which allow companies to leverage your money for there benefit. If they make a profit you share in the winnings; however if the CEO makes the wrong decision(s) it’s your loss! Whew that’s a lot to think about, your trying to create wealth, build your future and all of the sudden BAM!

You just lost your precious nest egg, you’re about to retire and the next thing you know you are faced with the option to keep working and don’t retire or retire and live a miserable, uncomfortable lifestyle. Strategy means you plan through the mini setbacks, allocate & diversify properly. One of the best ways that you can prepare for retirement is by placing “select pre-developed real estate [land banking] into your portfolio.”

When doing so you need to know how to locate the the property, look for the crucial signs of future development, have an exit strategy or use the specialists who know all of these details and then some. Strategic land banking is one of the surest ways to grow your retirement portfolio, avoid risk exposure to the stock market and preserve your capital.

You can invest in companies accounts receivables and many other types of non traditional investments that are more secure than stocks or other types of investments that are not as receptive to market volatility. Your retirement is something you need to take seriously. I have many friends who are approaching their early to mid forties and they have no cash reserves or retirement nest egg to speak of.

They are working a plan that will ultimately set them up for failure and certain disaster. The differences in planning for today versus tomorrow are quite simple. You have the ability to fail in your planning for the short term and still have time to recover from the losses. However when you don’t plan ahead for retirement you are risking the comfort and security for your future.

You’re older and the Government places restrictions on your contribution limits, your age prevents you from having the time to successfully rebuild your retirement nest egg to a point that it can sustain you for the rest of your years.

Sure people bank on the inheritance they may receive I have a friend right now that is doing just that; she’s unemployed and the inheritance monies is being held up for many months while the trustee takes care of paying all of the creditors and lien holders, sell the shares of stock and remove their share of the proceeds before the disbursements ever take place.

Now she is facing eviction, loss of her car and other parts of security that comes with being financially prepared. Creating wealth isn’t rocket science, it’s a simple mathematical equation that simply says it’s not how much you make it’s how much you keep.

More and more people are faced with job loss, foreclosure, bankruptcy and other financial hardships that place unneeded stress, health implications and burdens that can cause sever health problems. Being financially sound creates peace and comfort in your life. Take the time to learn the knowledge, plan your finances strategically and retire with surety and ease.

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