Preparing Yourself for Retirement

Every one has to retire at one point or the other. Whether you retire early or late depend very much on your financial situation and your family background. Some who are late starters; meaning those who are almost at retirement age but still having young children might not be able to retire early even if they want to. Others are luckier in the sense that they have their retirement years all planned out.

Remember, when you retire you are expected to draw on your retirement funds and investment portfolios for at least a minimum of 25 years; some may be longer depending on individual life span.

Here are 3 things you need to do before you retire:-

1. Explore Investing Avenue for your retirement funds

If you are only starting to invest after drawing on your retirement funds, you will have restricted investment objectives, in other words, you cannot afford high risk investment and you definitely cannot afford big losses. You probably have to settle for dividends and interest income where your investment has assured earning.

a. Invest in Stocks

Start to look for fundamentally sound stocks with good historical dividends payout to purchase. Check out the stock historical price and set a target price that you are willing to purchase and look out for the stock movement. Once you draw on your retirement fund, you are ever ready to start your stock investing. Research needs time and its better to start now before you actual retirement date.

b. Invest in Mutual Funds

It would be good advice to put at least 50% of your retirement funds into a good mutual fund to grow your money. Do a survey on the funds available in the market and do a study on the returns of the funds you want to invest in. Again, you need to start looking for good investment funds now rather than wait for your fund to be available.

c. Foreign Currency Deposit

You might want to explore foreign currency investment which gives you better interest rates than your home currency. It will be to your advantage to purchase the currency when the exchange rate is low and put them into fixed deposits.

2. Medical Check-up

For working people who has medical benefits with their companies it is advisable to go for a full medical check-up before your final workings days. Ironically, once you retire you will probably discover some sickness that we weren’t aware of while you are busy working. So, take time off to do your much needed check; all the scans and tumour markers that are so needed. Mostly, we put off such check-up due to fear of finding out the truth but it is better to know while you are fully insured than to find out later when your working insurance has lapsed.

3. Do a Retirement Budget

Depending on your retirement portfolios… you will have to be realistic when coming out with your retirement budget. Obviously, without an active income, you will need to scale down on your expenses. If you put out a monthly expenses budget, you will be able to know how long your retirement fund will be able to last you. If your stretch is 30 years, then you are safe to retire in comfort, if not you will have to re-look at your expenses. If you can stretch longer years, then it looks like you are ready to retire and enjoy life.