R101 #1 - Retirement 101

Why the Retirement 101 blog?

Whether you’re already in retirement, or 5-10 (or more!) years away, you can always improve your retirement plan. Many people believe that once they’ve spent a lifetime saving, they can sail off into retirement and the financial part of it gets easier.

Unfortunately, that’s not how it works.

In fact, not only does the financial part not get easier, the non-financial part doesn’t either. We’ll tackle that part at the end.

But for now, I’m going to cover 14 separate items about retirement planning that I think are important for every person to understand and think about. We start with a very high-level look at what kind of mentality you’re going into retirement with. What are you most afraid of?

It’s possible that you are concerned about multiple outcomes in retirement – running out of money, not enjoying life while you can, not leaving enough (or leaving too much) money to heirs, or being forced to downsize your lifestyle just to name a few.

That’s ok.

The problem is that various concerns lead to solutions that contradict each other. Solving for one risk usually leads to others. There isn’t one perfect set of decisions in retirement that works for everyone. There is no “answer”.

The best we can do is work together to come up with a set of solutions you feel comfortable with based on who you are. If you change your mind, we change your plan. If something happens that’s outside of our control, we can adjust the plan.

Let’s get started with the first question you need to consider – What’s your approach to retirement income planning?