You Don’t Get Do Overs at Retirement

You’re playing a game and all at once someone shouts “Do over” and everyone starts the game over. You get “do overs” in quite a few things in life but retirement planning isn’t one of them. Whatever decisions you make now you will have to live with once you retire. Think about your retirement and what you might want to be doing when you reach 55, 60, or older. Do you want to be scratching out a living or do you want to be enjoying life? What you do right now could dictate your future retirement.
No matter what your age, this isn’t something that should wait. Every year you put off stashing something away for retirement, you are losing money. The sooner you start, the less you will have to set aside each pay to have a nice retirement nest egg.

What can you do?
There are lots of ways you can start saving for your retirement. If your company has a retirement plan, sign up and contribute as much as you can. Put aside a percentage of your pay check each month to invest in an IRA. If you invest in a traditional IRA, you might be able to take a tax deduction for the amount. If you invest in a Roth IRA, you won’t get a tax deduction but your earnings will be tax-free. There are no tricks to retirement planning and saving, it’s something you should do on a regular basis. Even if you have a company retirement plan, it’s a good idea to have some personal saving in an IRA or similar saving vehicle.
Bottom line:
Gone are the days when a company had a guaranteed pension plan to supplement your social security benefits. Gone are the days when a retired person could actually live on the payout from a company pension and social security benefits. We are accustomed to a lifestyle that commands us to have 80 percent to 90 percent or more of our annual income set aside for our retirement. Given the longevity of today’s population, you could live for 20 or 30 years after you retire so you will need to have quite a nest egg put aside. If you are planning to retire in the lifestyle you have grown accustomed to living, you can’t do a “do over”, you have to start planning and saving right now.