Preparing for Retirement
You can take steps today to work toward financial independence – so you have the freedom to make the future your own.
Step 1: Plan Your Lifestyle
The starting point of a retirement plan is to think about what will make retirement the best years of your life. It’s about developing a retirement vision and enjoyevery day because you are doing the things you love to do. Ideally, these years of your life should be happy, fun and filled with meaningful activities that represent who you are and some of your passions in life.
Step 2: Develop a Retirement Price Tag
Regardless of your age or stage of planning, it is important to understand your spending in such a way that it would help you to recognize how much money you might need on a day-to-day, month-to-month or year-to-year basis.
In retirement I see too many people sacrifice their lifestyles to accommodate less income in retirement. Instead of adapting a lifestyle to an income, wouldn’t the goal be to establish or create the income needed for the lifestyle you want?
Retirement planning is simply looking into the future to make that future as predictable as possible. It’s about looking at where you are today, where you want to be and finding the most desirable path to get from her to there.
Step 3: Go Looking for the Income (Paycheques)
Once you have a sense of the lifestyle you want and the price tag for your retirement based on that desired lifestyle, be on the hunt for income - the more sources of income you have in retirement, the more money you will have in hand!
Prioritize your income, your plan and your projections should reflect that different paycheques or income sources may be taxed differently.
Basically, a retirement plan is really a projection of your income and expenses into the future. If you have enough retirement income (after tax) whether it comes from Canada Pension Plan, Old Age Security, RRIFs, Annuities, Pension plans or other sources, to meet your retirement price tag, then you should be in a good position to retire. If not, then the plan should help you to see ways that you can compromise and get you to review your options. Click here to view your options for Government Benefits at SERVICE CANADA
Contact APlus to start or review your retirement plan today!