Scott Burns of the Boston Globe was asked from a couple nearing retirement for some guidelines in their retirement planning. In “Eliminating debt, assessing spending habits are essential to secure retirement,” the columnist gives his important steps towards retirement.
- Get debt and spending under control. Do what you can to eliminate all of your debt. Lower your spending by taking stock of what you really need. It might be wise to downsize your living arrangements or sell real estate and rent.
- You must have a guaranteed monthly income. An individual lifetime annuity or a joint and survivorship lifetime annuity will help secure the rest of your assets from being drawn down as much.
- Get investment expenses under control. The easiest way to minimize these expenses is by becoming an index fund investor. Be sure to diversify investments across asset classes. Burns recommends you begin with “domestic fixed-income, expand to domestic stocks, and then branch out to international stocks, international fixed-income, REITs, energy and emerging markets.”
- Take just as much time to consider your spending as you do your investing. Every $1,000 that you save instead of spend adds up to $25,000 in retirement savings. Easy switches like using generic prescription drugs can put you on the path to spend less.
By taking stock of your spending habits, eliminating your debt, using 401k annuities rollovers to guarantee monthly income for life, and making smart investment decisions; you should be able to obtain the comfortable retirement that we all desire.
