How to Plan for Retirement?

Retirement is a crucial turning point in one’s life. Many people look forward to retirement, their golden years of life, but never plan for it. They undermine the importance of getting a retirement plan and justify this mind set up by saying that their present savings will be enough to meet the retirement expenses. This assumption is far from truth. It is always good to get a retirement plan and here’s why -

• The conventional savings are never enough to keep up with the inflation costs
• You may fall short of your savings in case of unforeseen medical expenses
• It’s wiser to be financially independent  when you retire
• A retirement plan gets you a regular income post retirement
• A retirement plan funds your post-retirement dreams

Plan your Retirement in 4 Simple Steps

Planning you retirement is not rocket science. All it needs you is to be a little proactive and start assessing your needs, set realistic goals and the means to achieve them within a specified time frame. A retirement calculator is a smart tool that helps you to plan out your retirement in 4 easy steps.

• Put in your present age and the age at which you plan to retire. Post that you’ll be asked to put in the age, you expect to live post retirement. The calculator will yield an investment tenure that is how many years you have in hand to build a decent corpus for your retirement.
• Put in your current cost of living that encompass expenses incurred on household, travel, personal goods, leisure, EMIs if any and so forth. Taking into account the inflation rate, you’ll get an idea of your cost of living in the future when you retire.
• Enter your present savings and investments and your present monthly contribution towards your retirement along with the expected rate of return.
• The calculator will assess if your current savings will or will not be enough to suffice your post retirement expenses. If not enough, the calculator will show the shortfall mark and come up with an ideal corpus; you need as a lump sum or as annuity at the time of retirement. Eventually, you’ll get to know the monthly contribution; you should start making today to achieve your retirement goals.  

A retirement plan is one of the best forms of investment. It not only gets you a decent return in the form of regular annuities but also assures a financial back up for your dependents in case of an unfortunate event. So you get to enjoy the best of both worlds, the insurance and the investment.

Handy Tips

• Start early – The earlier you start, the larger corpus you will build for your retirement.
• Never too late - Even if you are quite close to your retirement, you should start planning because it’s never too late to start retirement planning.
• Switch smart – If you opt for a retirement ULIP, you should invest the funds in equities in the initial years and transfer the funds from equities to debts as you reach the end of the policy term. This will help you to lock in the returns earned.
• Take new health resolutions – A timely retirement plan will back you up financially but the real wealth is health. Staying healthy gets a long way to make the later years of your life, golden in the true sense.