Planning and thinking about retirement

While I’ve heard that ignorance is bliss, habitual laziness when it comes to learning about best practices on planning for your future is likely to lead to misery down the road

This becomes an even greater truth when you consider that:

The U.S. Census Bureau projects by 2050 there will be 1.1 million centenarians in America alone. Meanwhile, researchers at Boston University predict there will be even more, estimating some 3 million baby boomers will live to be 100 or older.

Technology & Modern Medicine continue to improve at breakneck speeds Cures, effective treatments, and possibly even preventative measures may exist for today’s most common causes of death by the time you are ready to retire. Who knows what your life span may end up being!

If you think about just these two things it may be wise to plan your retirement with the assumption you will live to 100 (at least). If you retire at age 60 then retirement could very well encompass 40% of your entire life.  So, why are you not investing time to .to learn how to SIGNIFICANTLY improve the quality and security of your retirement.

Won’t you  have much less of a problem if your money outlives you rather than the other way around?

You may have less of a worry with that compared to many others if you have a defined benefit plan that promises you pension income for life. However, I suggest that you may want to consider learning about investment and saving strategies for retirement in addition to your pension.

If you do not have a defined benefit plan, then you really do need to consider learning about investing /savings for your retirement. The question is how much responsibility do you have and how much does society have for your pension.

The current government in Canada believes that they have little or no responsibility beyond laying out a framework that allows the individual some tax breaks if they save for retirement. The government of Canada would, in my view, like to gut the Old Age Security program, not because it doesn’t’ work but because it is a social program that takes away responsibility from the individual for planning their own retirement.

I have also notice that pension reformers from around the world, are trying to shift the focus away from the government and corporations and back to the individual.

For example in the US many States have recently altered their pension benefits in some way. In fact, the Chicago Tribune reported that in 2010 and 2011, a whopping 41 States  enacted some form of change to their pension plan. These changes could have been anything from:

• Increasing retirement age for teachers and other state employees
• Requiring a higher percentage of salary to be contributed to the pension by employees
• Reduced future pension benefits and/or retiree healthcare benefits

Several States used a combination of those measures. In some States, these changes may be enough to not have to implement any further changes, but there is some strong concern that that these changes are giving states precedent to make more (as well as more aggressive) pension alterations in the future.