A lot of people find a different meaning to having a happy and fulfilling retirement. While this might mean leaving a full-time career to a meaningful part-time work to you, it may mean leaving a full-time career to starting a garden, spending more time with family, or visiting the golf course regularly to other people. Once you finalized how you will be happy after retirement, you need to know how to get there financially. Here are some steps you need to take:
Step 1: Define Your Retirement
Before your retirement, you should have an idea of how you would like to spend retirement days. This is where you will write down your objectives with important goals first. Don’t discuss the budget yet, instead focus on ideas. For example, write “trips to the lake” instead of “travels” and “volunteer with kids a day per week” instead of “stay involved in my community.” List all your goals and be practical while keeping out budget.
Step 2: List Out Your ‘Assets’
You already know your monthly salary, your bank amount and how much is in your retirement account but you don’t know about other assets that will help increase your retirement account money. Maybe you restore cars or collect antiques. Think of all your hobbies that may turn into cash and list them out and think about how to turn them into money.
Step 3: Evaluate Your Health – Now
You need to improve your health to get the most out of life after your retirement. Schedule your checkups with doctors and plan to maintain or improve your health. Commit to healthy eating, getting enough sleep and exercising. Try to stay sharp mentally with books, brain games, and puzzles. All these will help you both physically and mentally.
Step 4: Determine When to Collect Social Security
Please note that “Later is Better”! We all need to receive the Social Security benefit to support our retirement dreams and to pay for essentials. The best time to collect the social security benefit is not now but later. This will benefit you and your family if you stay longer.
Step 5: Connect with People Through Social Media and Other Methods
Like you do when in service, you need to maintain your current network and build more in retirement. Make use of this opportunity to showcase your talents to the people; this might be of help when fulfilling your retirement dreams. The use of networking strategy is very useful, and it may mean that you have to spend a couple of hours on LinkedIn or Twitter chatting with people of the same skills and interests. The more active you are online; the more opportunities you will get.
Step 6: Decide How Much You Need (or Want) to Work
This requires a classic cost-benefit equation. You either have to spend limited money or stay in the workforce to fulfill your dreams unless you are set for life financially. Take the budget into consideration when writing down your retirement goals. You will have to determine the amount of time needed to work to achieve these goals.
Step 7: Create a Retirement Budget
You need to include the amount of money you are gaining, the amount you will spend to reach the goals you have identified (in step 1 above) and the amount you owe people in your retirement budget. To get started, you need to track your income and expenses for some months. Invest the money you have into multiple investments and include your debts in your budget to knock it down.
Step 8: Find Different Ways to Cut Your Expenses (By Saving More)
If you are about to retire, you need to be prepared by saving more. This does not mean that you have to put all your money into savings but try to save more. Start by cutting down your expenses (on bills mostly or by cutting down your 100 cable channels) to save more. For example, you can decide to grow your vegetables to save money. You need to cut down your debt to save more.
Step 9: Prepare for the Unexpected
You may not know what will happen next, but something may happen unexpectedly; many of us do not consider this. Once you stay prepared, you will not get caught off guard later. You should find some time to react to minor issues that come unaware. Prepare for things like grave illness or a roof leak.
Step 10: Stick to Your Plan
This may not be an easy step, but it is rewarding if you can stick to your plan. We are humans, and we may want to go back to our old habits after trying a new one. If you find it hard to stick to your plan, you may find different communities that will help you out.
