Should You Front Load Your Retirement With Fun?

When you consider it carefully, “What do you want to do when you retire?” is more than one question. Most people will answer with ideas for travel and adventures, or else long-awaited bucket list items they have long looked forward to accomplishing, such as cooking a Thanksgiving dinner from scratch for the whole family. There is more to planning for retirement than that. Your retirement budget has more to do with mundane experiences. You should assume that, when you are retired, you will devote most of your days to errands, medical appointments, and activities that cost little or nothing, such as going for walks in your neighborhood, or knitting sweaters for your grandchildren or knitting sweaters to donate to children in need. Yes, there will be some splurges in retirement, but they will probably happen closer to the beginning. For help planning for the monotonous parts of retirement as well as the fun parts, contact a Bronx estate planning lawyer.

Eat, Drink, and Be Merry, for Tomorrow We Budget?

Financial planners used to advise clients that they should follow the four percent rule, where they could withdraw four percent of their retirement savings each year; this portion of their retirement savings, plus Social Security income, represents their retirement budget. Even if your retirement savings are modest, you can have a comfortable retirement this way, especially if you have long-term care insurance.

When you plan your retirement budget, you should assume that you do not know how many years of retirement you will spend in good health and how many years you will need long-term care. It stands to reason, then, that your big splurges will come closer to the beginning of retirement. You are more likely to be healthy enough to take a cruise around the world when you are 67 than you are when you are 85. Therefore, it makes sense to splurge on the big-ticket bucket list items at the beginning of your retirement, because there is no guarantee that you will be around to enjoy them later.

For that matter, your first year of retirement can be a time of financial trial and error. If, at the end of your first year of retirement, you look at how much you spent, and you are horrified, chalk it up to lessons learned. There is still time to correct course. Think about how quickly you burned through your spending money in your first year of college, how many morning classes you slept through, and how much junk food you ate. Things were better the second year; you learned from your mistakes. The same thing can happen with your budget in your second year of retirement.

Schedule a Confidential Consultation With a Bronx Estate Planning Attorney

An estate planning lawyer can help you make practical decisions about adjusting your retirement budget in order to adjust to your changing circumstances.  Contact Cavallo & Cavallo in the Bronx, New York to set up a consultation.

Source:

moneywise.com/managing-money/budgeting/i-spent-way-too-much-in-my-first-4-years-of-retirement