Best ways to save for retirement

Are you looking for information on the best ways to save for retirement?  If you are, you have come to the right place. 

Establish a Money saving Goal

If you want to save money for retirement, it is first important to determine how much money you need to save.  This is the most important step to take when looking to save for retirement.  While you can always save money for retirement without having a goal in mind, will you have enough?  You will never know unless you take the time to do the research first.

When determining how much you need to comfortably retire, examine your wants and needs.  Account for living expenses, such as housing, utilities, food, transportation, healthcare and other related expenses.  Next, what are your retirement goals?  What type of home would you like to live in?  Where would you like to live?  What activities do you want to enjoy?  Calculate the average cost of these.  That total figure is your retirement savings goal.  As an important reminder, do not stop saving even if you reach that goal early on.

Create a Budget for Yourself

Creating a budget is another easy way to save money for retirement.  Why?  Because it can help you determine where you can save money.  Many Americans waste money and a considerable amount of it.  To prevent yourself from doing so, create a budget.  This budget should include expenses that you must pay; ones that you cannot live without.  For example, your rent or mortgage payment and all utility bills, transportation costs, and food should be included in your budget.

Once your needed expenses are totaled, subtract that amount from your monthly income.  The difference is money that you can and should put into a retirement savings account.

Eliminate Unnecessary Purchases

In keeping with creating a budget, be sure to eliminate unnecessary purchases.  If you work outside of the home, do you bring your lunch to work or make your coffee at home?  If not, you should start doing so.  If you are 35 years old, you may be surprised with how much money you can save over the next ten or twenty years by taking this simple approach.  

In addition to completely eliminating unnecessary purchases, consider reducing those that you do not want to give up.  For example, do you like to eat out?  Instead of eating out once a week, aim for once a month.  Also, examine the packages for your phone, cable, and the Internet.  Can you reduce their costs without having to give them up completely?  If so, do so.

Contribute to Your 401(k)

Do you have a 401(k) plan through your employer?  If so, do you currently contribute to it?  If not, now is the time to start, even if you are only twenty years old.  Those between the ages of twenty and forty are encouraged to contribute around 5% to 10% of their income.  Those forty to sixty years old are encouraged to contribute as much as possible.

What is nice about 401(k) plans is that most employers maximize your contributions.  For instance, if you were to meet your company’s minimum personal contribution for the year, they may match that money for you!  Yes, you do still have to deposit your own money, but the money that your employer contributes can be considered free money.

Seek Professional Help

While you can find a number of helpful retirement planning resources online, this information can sometimes be difficult to read.  Sometimes, it seems as if financial experts are talking in a different language.  

If you are not familiar with 401(k) plans, Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs), social security benefits, and pension plans, you should schedule a meeting with a professional financial advisor.  Not only can they help you understand these great retirement programs and accounts, they can also help you develop a sold retirement savings plan.  This can help to ensure that you successfully meet your goal.

Why Saving For Retirement Is Important

Whether you are 20, 30, 40, 50, or 60 years of age, are you planning for retirement?  If not, you should be.  Unfortunately, many individuals do not understand the importance of planning for retirement.  If you are one of those individuals, please continue reading on for information that will likely change your outlook on planning and preparing for your retirement.

The greatest reason why you should save for retirement is because it is your life.  The amount of money that you save for retirement will have a profound impact on how your life is lived.  Do you have any dreams or goals?  Typically, retirement is the best time to meet your goals and transform your dreams into reality, but you can only do so if you are financially prepared.  If you are not, you may be worried about where you will live or where your next meal will come from, as opposed to wondering when the best time to take a vacation is.  

Another important reason why you should start saving for retirement and early is for your children.  Even if you are twenty years old and single, remember that there may come a point in your life when you have a family.  Those who do not properly plan and save for retirement put a huge burden on their families.  As a parent, it is your job to protect your children, not cause them to face their own financial difficulties because they must pay for your retirement expenses.

Saving for retirement can also help to ensure that you are well cared for.  This is important in terms of health.  There comes a point in everyone’s life when his or her health starts to worsen with age.  While you may be able to live on your own and care for yourself when you first enter into retirement, there may come a point in time when you can no longer do so.  If and when that time comes, are you financially prepared?  Can you afford the cost of long-term care?  The cost of long-term can be expensive and it should be included in the cost of your retirement; therefore, you should start saving now.

Another one of the many reasons why you will want to start saving for your retirement is because you won’t want to keep on working.  Those who are unprepared for retirement often keep on working or later return to the workforce.  Is this really something that you want to do?  Also, remember your age and your health.  It is highly unlikely that you will be ale to work until you die.  That is why you should start saving for retirement, as you cannot generate income for yourself forever.

Finally, social security benefits are nice, but they will not cover all of your retirement living expenses.  Many financial advisors state you will need around 70% of your current income to live comfortably in retirement.  Unfortunately, most individuals only receive about 40% of that from social security benefits.  Depending on how much you contributed through the payment of taxes, that amount may be lower.  Since you cannot rely on social security benefits to survive, you need to start saving for retirement.

Your life in retirement is in your own hands, so start saving today.

Did you know?

The following is from the Longevity New Alert  put out by the Maximum Life Foundation

Researchers suggest, from an examination of epidemiological data, that stroke is for most patients a preventable occurrence largely driven by hypertension, inactivity, and obesity. In this, the implication is that better life choices in the environment of present day medical technologies could push stroke to occur at greater ages, such that most older people would die from other consequences of aging first - more a matter of postponement than prevention per se.

Lowering age-related increases in blood pressure is known to lower the risk of all cardiovascular issues, and the effects of inactivity and obesity on life expectancy and risk of age-related disease are well proven.

Hypertension is driven by stiffening of blood vessels, which may be caused by fundamental damages such as cross-linking in blood vessel walls, inflammation due to the presence of senescent cells, and so forth.

The bad life choices mentioned above will speed up stiffening in blood vessels and consequent hypertension, but this end state will still exist, further down the line, even for those people who live the healthiest lives. This will continue to be the case until new therapies are built to repair the root causes - which, should in my opinion,be the highest priority, over and above campaigns aimed at adjusting behavior.

Read More https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2016/07/claiming-stroke-incidence-to-be-largely-preventable/

Did you get the pizza?

Right now, imagine the mansion of your wildest dreams. Happy, shiny, and filled with laughing friends who are carrying you through the giant double doors, across the marble entry hall, marching you up and down the circular stairway on their shoulders. A live band blasting out back by the dock, a water polo match in the pool that was recently spiked with bubble bath, the paparazzi flying in low on helicopters to catch a glimpse of you. Speed boats, sailboats, and so many jet skis whizzing around that your neighbors think James Bond or Beyoncé must have been invited... 

And then suddenly, when you think it just couldn't get any better, the doorbell GONGS and everyone falls silent. 

Yes!! Pizza has arrived. Enjoy the dream!!