How To create your Vision through Retirement Financial Planning

If you can focus on what is important to you then you can feel in control through retirement financial planning

Retirement according to Statistics Canada states that the average Canadian will spend over 90,000 hours working over their lifetime, yet 50% of people over age 65 spent no time at all preparing for it.

What retirement financial planning is about organizing and keeping you on track to the second part of your life.

There are several steps to planning your retirement. The first is to determine your needs, the next is to evaluate your financial situation and the last is to prepare a plan. Generally speaking, it's a financial plan that consists of the following points.

Retirement financial planning will reveal how much do you need in order to retire?

1. Define the type of lifestyle that you wish to have at retirement

2. Create a budget in today's dollars

3. Consider the effect of retirement on expenses (which will be less, which will be more)

What are the potential sources of retirement income?

1. Government Benefits (CPP/QPP, OAS , GIS)

2. Supplemental pension plans

3. RRSP, RRIF, LIF

4. Savings, annuities

5. Rental or business income

6. Reverse Mortgage

How much do you need to save and how should this money be invested in order to meet your retirement objectives?

1.Determine shortfall between desired income and accumulated income

2.Finalize your asset allocation

3.Set up a savings plan and revise your current investment strategy

It's Never Too Late to Plan for Retirement

If you do not already have a plan, then there is no time like the present to create one. If the one that you are following is out of date, it is time to review it and make sure that you are still on track. When creating your plan keep in mind the following goals in your planning.

Goals of Retirement Financial Planning

1. Set objectives and a plan to encounter them

2.Gain knowledge about available financial products and services

3.Maximize your rate of return

4.Minimize taxes

5.Prepare for the distribution of your estate

For years people have saved what they could towards retirement and through their lack of retirement financial planning strategies then lived off the income they could achieve.

To get an idea on where you stand calls for you to make use of retirement planning software and while there are many different pieces of software on the market. Cutting edge life planning technology can be of great help.

It is time to be proactive instead of reactive! Your personal retirement plan will show you must do in order to achieve your objectives. Start by taking a Successful Wealth Approach for retirement. For the self-employed your approach may be different.

Study Reveals Early Retirement
Not Linked To Longer Life

Even with effective retirement financial planning, retiring early may give people more time on the golf course or with the grandchildren but it is not associated with living longer it was revealed in a recent study.

They found that people who retired at 60 and 65 years old lived to similar ages but those who stopped working at 55, some for health reasons, had higher mortality rates.

"The long-term survival of people who retire at ages 55 or 60 is no better than that of those who retire at 65, especially for those who retire at 55," said Shan Tsai, an epidemiologist with the Shell Oil Company in Houston, Texas, in a report published online by the British Medical Journal.

The researchers studied 3,500 employees at the company's Texas plant who retired at 55, 60 or 65. They monitored their health for 26 years to see if people who stopped working early lived longer.

"On the contrary, mortality improved with increasing age at retirement for people from both high and low economic groups," Tsai added.

Deaths were nearly twice as high in the first 10 years after retirement for people who left work at 55 years old compared to those who worked longer.

The findings confirm the results of earlier research.

"Several studies found lower survival among those retiring early and attributed this to poor health status forcing early retirement," Tsai added.

Retirement Dreams Never Become
Reality For Some Canadians

I recently came across this study and thought about some of the people I have encountered over the years, it hit how much we take for granted our health. Planning your retirement is the next chapter in our lives as much as it is up to us make sure we have the financial resources to do the things we like to do. It is twice as important to take care of ourselves.

Exotic travel during retirement is the most popular dream for nearly half of Canadian full-time and part-time workers (48%) over 40 years old. But workers should not plan on packing their suitcases too quickly when they finish working.

Once people retire, reality appears to set in as this number one dream evaporates and is replaced by "staying or being healthy"

(26% of Canadian retirees) or "having no dreams at all" (26% of retirees vs. 6% for workers). Travel (24%) takes a definite backseat once people retire, according to the fourth annual Desjardins Financial Security Survey on Retirement conducted by CROP and Environics market research firms.

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