Retirement is a treasured time in everyone’s life. There are
some important financial issues that need to be addressed to make sure that
your retirement plans are set up the proper way for you and your family, based
on your specific goals and objectives. To ensure that your retirement years
will be the best that they can be, make sure that you review and address the
following issues.
Ownership and
Beneficiary Information: Make sure that you have assets titled properly and
that your beneficiary designations are set up the most proper way for you and
your family’s situation. So many times this important information is ignored in
planning, or even wrong. Properly set up ownership and beneficiary information
can save time, money and problems.
Legal Documents:
Make sure that your legal documents are set up and updated properly for your
individual planning purposes. Wills, Trusts, Power of Attorney, and other legal
documents play very important roles during the retirement years. These properly
set up documents can literally save thousands of dollars, countless hours,
maintain privacy and save several unnecessary problems for you and your
beneficiaries.
Social Security: Find
out how you can maximize your social security benefits and see if you can lower
or eliminate the taxes paid on social security income.
Long Term Care:
Long term care is the number one cause of financial ruin for retirees, and for
the most part it is not covered by Medicare or private insurance. You need to
address this risk and find out the best way for you to protect your assets,
income and estate from this very serious issue.
401(k), 403(b)
Rollovers: What are the advantages and disadvantages to rolling over your
qualified plan to an IRA? Make sure you know what is right for your situation
depending on where and how your money is positioned.
Required Minimum
Distributions: Make sure you understand your required minimum distribution
ages and amounts from your IRA, 401(k), 403(b), etc. If you do not take these
distributions by a certain age, there are penalties.
Interest Rates:
Obviously we are in a very low interest rate environment. However, that does
not mean that your safe money has to earn virtually nothing. There are options
available that can allow your safe money to earn competitive interest rates.
Make sure you are aware of these options.
Pension Maximization:
Your pension decision is a very important one. When you select your pension
option, this one time decision generally is final and can never be changed.
Make sure that you know of and understand all of your pension options before
making your selection. Contact a qualified financial advisor and have them show
you all or your options and explain each and every one so you will be able to
choose the very best options for you and your family.
Proper Money
Management: The stock market has been and continues to be very volatile. In
order to achieve compounding returns over time, your money has to be in a
position to avoid the major hits the markets take. Proper money management is
key to growing and protecting investment money in today’s constantly changing
and volatile market environment.
Get the proper help:
Obtain an advisor who is a specialist and educated in all areas of
pre-retirement and retirement issues. Obtain an advisor who has your best
interests in mind and will answer all or your questions, as well as the
questions that you have not thought to ask. Get an advisor who will meet with
you on a regular basis to ensure that your planning is always up to date and
accurate, as industry changes, tax law changes, interest rate changes and most
importantly, goals and objective changes are going to occur. Obtain an advisor
who has a Fiduciary Duty to always act in your best interest.
These are a few of the very important issues and a brief
explanation of each that you will need to address before and during your
retirement years.
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