Moneywise24 Personal Finance

Author: Jim Roche NJ

“Flying by the Seat of Your Pants” might have worked just fine while you were employed, but ignorance or mistakes in early retirement planning can cost you dearly. Retiring early, choosing the wrong investments, withdrawing too much money or failing to plan for health-care costs can all turn your golden years to brass.

Although there is no guarantee you’ll avoid unpleasant surprises if you plan — but you can probably tip the odds in your favor. Here’s a checklist to get you started. (As you get going, your Retirement Planning can help you make sure the numbers add up.)

10 years out Think about where you’ll live. Demographic surveys show most retirees “age in place,” meaning they continue to live in the same house, or at least the same community, as when they retired. But downsizing or moving to a cheaper community can help your retirement assets last longer. Since where you live has a strong impact on your expenses, you’ll want to consider your options carefully.

The Sabols, for example, had equity worth more than $225,000 in their New Jersey home. If they sell and move to the Florida condo they own, they could add that equity to the $350,000 already saved in their retirement nestegg. If they stay put for a few years, by contrast, the Sabols would have to keep paying their mortgage and other home expenses — a difference of $2,000 or more in their monthly costs.

Imagine what you’ll do. Some people don’t think about how they’ll spend their time in retirement until they wake up jobless. That’s a bad idea psychologically as well as financially.

Retirees who fare best are generally the ones who have absorbing interests to pursue, said Ralph Warner, the recently retired author of “Get a Life: You Don’t Need a Million to Retire Well” (Nolo Press). Those who wait until retirement often find themselves casting about for something to do, and may discover that the hobby or pastime they thought they would love isn’t quite so engaging when they can indulge it full-time. As Warner says, “There’s only so much golf you can play.”

Speaking of golf, your activities in retirement also influence how much money you’ll need. If you want to play the finest courses or travel the world, you’ll need to save more than if you like to play canasta and visit relatives.

Boost your retirement contributions. If you’re not already taking full advantage of your 401(k), IRA and other retirement options, now’s the time to increase your contributions. Use MSN Money’s Plan for your early retirement planning to see if you’re on track, and try your calculations using different life expectancies. Your chances of making it to age 90 or beyond have never been better; many financial planners now use age 95 as their default life expectancy.

Consider paying down your mortgage. If you still have some cash left over after paying off your other debt and maximizing your retirement contributions, think about getting that mortgage retired before you do. Having the house paid off helps many retirees sleep better at night. Not having a mortgage also means you may have to draw less from your retirement accounts, allowing them to grow tax-deferred longer and reducing your overall tax bill.

It is never to early to learn how to retire. Start today check with your employer to see if they offer any early retirement incentive programs. In the next installment I will cover retirement planning with 5 years to go before retirement.

Jim Roche of NJ has created The Early Retirement Planning Forum for you to visit join and post all of your early retirement planning tips as well as provide information and resources for those wanting to retire early, or just what is necessary for you to know how retiring early can become a reality. .

About the Author:

For More Information Contact Jim Roche NJ 908-413-5363 http://retireearly.thesavingshighway.com/ jimrochenj@gmail.com

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – Planning Early Retirement

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As soon as you spend money, it is gone and you will never get it back. Surely you will earn some more money, but it is not the same money. You have lost the money, unavailable for investing it, unavailable for paying back debt. Looking at things differently, you may actually have spent much more on your purchase.

Look at money from a different perspective for a moment:

If I spend some money on some item now, it will not be able to generate interest.

The magic word in this statement is ‘interest’. If I buy some item at this point in time, I am litterally missing out on obtaining interest on it. Let’s taken an example of this, a men’s suit which I bought a few weeks ago. The suit costed me 220 Euros, which is not expensive. However, would I have not bought this suit, I would have had this money available to put on my savings account. Assuming that the savings account has a duration of 5 years with an annual interest rate of 4%, these 220 Euros would turn into 268 Euros over that 5-year period. This is an increase of 21%.

If you are currently paying back debt, and you are allowed to transfer additional one-off sums, the effect is the same; the interest rate for debt is much higher than it is for savings (for example 12%). Suppse you are paying back a 10,000 Euro loan at an interest rate of 12%, during the next 60 months. The monthly payback rate would usually be 219 Euro per month, during a period of 60 months. Now suppose, you would make a down payment of 220 Euros (what you would have otherwise spent on the suit). This leaves you with a monthly payment of 215 Euros per month. You are saving 60×4 Euros, making a total of 240 Euros.

The benefit of using such a calculation as the ones above, is to be contious of the future value of the money you are spending. For myself, it allows me to strictly determine whether I really, really need an item, and whether or not it will enrich my life. If it does not enrich my life significantly, or if it does not help me in some way to either reduce expenses or increase income, I will usually not buy it. I would rather put the money aside on a bank account, or perhaps invest it, so it can grow over time.

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I have a few questions for you: Do you know your monthly net wage? Do you know how much money you spent on groceries last week? If you consolidate all of your accounts, including checking accounts, credit cards, and investments, how did your assets and liabilities develop per month during the past 6 months?  

These may seem some tricky questions perhaps, but how can you maintain a grip on your finances if you are not able to see how your finances develop over time, or if you can’t match your budget with your actual expenses? Making your finances transparent and visible is perhaps one of the first essential steps in gaining financial control.

 Doing your very personal bookkeeping means making your finances transparent. Bookkeeping does not need to be as boring as many people imagine it to be. Actually, it can be great fun, since you are actually seeing how, for example, specific changes in purchasing behaviour have a direct impact on your financial strength. Generally, Bookkeeping requires nothing more than a piece of paper (or a pre-printed book of household accounts) and a pencil. You will require separate columns for the following information: 

• Date of the transaction
• Credit amount, or the amount you received
• Debit amount, or the amount you spent
• Transaction category (e.g. groceries, real estate, living, automotive. You can define your own categories as you see fit).
• Payee
• Description / further comments

Alternatively, you can use a programme such as Microsoft Excel. Microsoft Excel offers the benefit, that you are able to set filters easily and create statistics. For example, if you would like to gain an insight on how much money you spent on automotive last month, you can set the appropriate filters and Excel will calculate this information.

If you are looking for an all-round solution, which allows you not only to do your daily bookkeeping, but also assist you in evaluating the results, you may want to consider purchasing a product such as Microsoft Money or Quicken. These programmes are specifically designed for personal finance purposes. They allow you to create multiple accounts, categories, budgets, and to enter all your transactions. In the background the programme will evaluate the data, and the programme may supply you with all the information you need.  Additionally, such programmes often allow its users to do research on companies and shares, and to plan possible future scenarios.

 The benefit of using personal finance software is tremendous; if administered regularly and precisely, you will know exactly where your money is coming from and where it is going to. Once you have your finances visible, it will allow you to make changes to how you handle money and the success over time.

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