Home > Marriage > Money > Are You Ready—for Retirement?
Are You Ready—for Retirement?
It's never too early (or too late) for couples to plan for their financial future.
Scott Kays
 1 of 6
Retirement. It sounds like such a long way off; why worry about planning for it now? After all, just paying the bills and putting food on the table is tough enough for most of us. Plus, there will be plenty of time to save for retirement after the kids are gone, right? Unfortunately, this is normally not the case. In fact, when preparing for your golden years, time is your biggest ally.
Surveys consistently show that only 4 to 7 percent of those who retire each year are financially independent. Other couples must depend on Social Security, relatives, welfare, or other charitable means to live. Poor planning is the primary culprit for this sad statistic. Conversely, good planning can make retirement years some of the best years of your lives.
Why do people fail to prepare adequately for retirement? Most do not understand its importance, and they lack the basic knowledge to plan properly.
Very simply, all retirement planning centers around two key elements: (1) Saving enough and (2) Investing your savings properly for a good return. Many factors are involved in each of these elements, but they represent the essence of retirement planning.
Saving Enough
There were days when the average worker retired at age sixty-five and died at seventy-three. Planning for eight years of retirement was not an ordeal. Between Social Security and a generous pension from a company for which they had worked over thirty years, the need for personal savings was minimal.
Things are much different today. The employee who works for one company most of his life and earns great pension benefits is becoming a character in a history book. Due to leaps in the medical field, average lifespans are increasing at a dramatic rate. At the same time, many people now opt to retire at ages well below sixty-five, meaning that an increasing percentage of workers will find themselves retired for longer than they worked. The need for good planning is greater today than at any time in our history.
To determine how much you need to save in preparation for this phase of your life, you must first determine your retirement income needs. There is no right or wrong answer here, but, assuming your house is paid for, a good rule-of-thumb is that you will require about 70 percent of your pre-retirement annual income to maintain your lifestyle.
What sources of income will be available to meet this need? Social Security will most likely be around in some form; so you should be safe counting on some income from it. A company pension is also a possibility, but, if you are like many of today's mobile workers, it may not be much.
We'd really like to know what you think about this article! |
Is this the kind of article you'd like to see more of?
Is there a topic you'd like us to cover?
Please send your suggestions to |
Marriage Partnership
Home | Archives | Contact Us
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
Try 3 Issues of Christianity Today Free!
|
 |
|
Subscribe to Christianity Today and get 3 free trial issues. No credit card required.
Please allow 4-6 weeks for delivery. Offer valid in U.S. only.
If you decide you want to keep Christianity Today coming, honor your invoice for just $19.95 and receive nine more issues, a full year in all. If not, simply write "cancel" across the invoice and return it. The three trial issues are yours to keep, regardless.
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
| |
|
RSS Feed
