Thursday, January 24, 2008

Retirement Planning

Retirement Planning Made Easy

You don't want to work all your life. You want to eventually retire and enjoy the rest of your life, hopefully with money saved while you were working. This requires retirement planning. Retirement planning isn't as difficult as it sounds. You only need to come up with a solid plan that you can work for several years so that you can have the money and time left over to enjoy yourself. In order to come up with a plan, you need to know how much money you make, how much you have left over after your bills are paid and you need to have a date in mind for when you would actually like to quit working and finally retire.

Money Management Programs

Probably the best way to go about retirement planning, besides hiring an accountant or retirement manager, is to buy a money management program for your computer. These programs are very easy to use. You simply plug in your income, your bills and the program will determine how much you have left over. You can print reports, you can view graphs, and it makes it very easy to plan for your retirement. Of course, you can do all of this manually but the money management programs are very handy and may save you from making an error.

Pay Yourself First

Anyone who is an expert in retirement planning will tell you to pay yourself first whenever you receive a paycheck. Treat your savings account like another bill, such as your mortgage, car or energy payment. Plan a certain amount that you'd like to save each month and whenever you get paid, put that amount into your savings account. You must also make a pact to yourself not to touch your savings unless it's absolutely necessary. Pretty soon, your retirement planning fund will grow and that's all it takes.

Planning Your Retirement Date

Pick a year you'd like to retire and also decide how much you'd like to have saved by then. For instance, you may want to retire when you're sixty five and you want to have at least fifty thousand in the bank. Now, just decide how much it will take monthly to get there. If you don't make enough to get to the total you'd like to have, it's then that you may want to think about mutual funds or CDs, where the money will build interest and compound over time.

That's all it takes for retirement planning. Just remember that it's going to take time. The key is not to think about your savings and to just treat it like any other bill. In time, you'll have the money you want to enjoy yourself when you finally retire.

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