When someone is in their 20s or 30s, retirement may still seem too far away to worry about. Unfortunately, waiting until retirement is around the corner makes it harder to enjoy those golden years.

Recent studies indicate that most people that are 50 and older are not ready for retirement and likely won’t be, even when they reach full retirement age. If you do not want to become one of those people that lose that retirement dream, the best thing that you can do is start saving and planning now, before it is too late.

Cut Expenses Now – To help you save for retirement you can start by reducing your spending now. There are plenty of ways that you can do this. Reduce your trips to the local convenience store to buy bread and milk; instead save it for when you make a trip to the grocery store. Try generic products instead of name brands; most are of equal quality but cost much less. The money you save with these strategies can go toward retirement.

Invest – Take advantage of investment opportunities. If you company offers a 401k, start contributing now. You can also open an IRA account and even think about real estate investments. The more your money grows over the years, the more financially secure your retirement will be. In addition to this, good investment strategies can actually make early retirement a real possibility.

Know Your Number – The key to a comfortable retirement is knowing what you’ll need to live without struggling. After all, it doesn’t do you any good to save if you don’t know how much you need to put back. You may not be able to figure your number down to the penny, but you should be able to come up with a good monthly estimate. Multiply this by the average number of years you can expect to live past retirement age, and you’ve got a starting point. Now add some extra for longer life, medical emergencies and maybe some travel as well, and your number should be pretty accurate.

The Bonfrisco Law Firm is a member of the American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys.

Nearly half of the people that are retired today are at risk for not having enough money to last throughout their retirement years. One solution that some people are turning to in order to supplement their retirement income is their whole life insurance cash value.

Extra money to get you through tough financial times is one of the reasons that a whole life insurance policy is one of the best investments that you can make for your retirement. Of course you also get the benefit of knowing that your family will be taken care of after you die, but due to the fact that a whole life insurance policy will grow in cash value, in both good and bad economic times, it is also a smart investment too.

Until recently most people only bought life insurance policies so that their loved ones would receive cash benefits when they died, but today more and more people are beginning to see the investment advantages of purchasing these types of insurance policies. Whole life insurance policies are helpful to retirees because they are flexible enough to help you take care of any number of financial problems if the need arises after retirement. The cash value of your whole life insurance policy can also be helpful in the years before you retire.

Advantages of Whole Life During Retirement

One of the biggest advantages to having cash value in your whole life insurance policy is that it can be extremely helpful in financing a long-term need. One example of how the cash value of this type of insurance policy can help would be if you want to pay for a grandchild’s college education. It is also very useful in helping you pay medical expenses later in life, or for long-term care.

The whole life insurance policy is a policy of guarantees, which is great because there are few guarantees in life today. With this type of policy your family is guaranteed a payout if you should die, your monthly premiums will never increase, plus you are guaranteed that the cash value of your policy will increase. When you add a whole life insurance policy to your retirement plan, it will be one investment that you won’t have to worry about.

For retirees, one of the biggest advantages to the whole life insurance policy is that it is there in case of emergencies. If your investments are suffering from a down market, it is far better to tap into the cash value of a life insurance policy than it is to sell your stock and lose money. In most cases, the value of stock will recover, but in the meantime you can live off of the cash reserves of your life insurance policy.

The Bonfrisco Law Firm is a member of the American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys.

Today, people that are nearing the age of retirement are a part of the Baby Boomer Generation; they grew up understanding that they would work all of their lives and when they retired, they would no longer have any financial cares. This is the picture that most Baby Boomers saw with their parents’ retirements, but this pretty picture is no longer the reality of retirement.

These days you can no longer count on a pension plan from your employer; in fact, few employers even offer these any more. If you do have a pension plan, you cannot really count on that being there through retirement, as most companies are dropping these in any way that they can. Yesterday’s pension plans have been replaced with the 401k, and there are still many employers that don’t even offer this.

Funding Retirement Is On Your Shoulders

No matter how long you work for a company, you will still be responsible for funding your own retirement. For most people it is unrealistic to think that they will get enough through Social Security to actually retire on, so the reality is you have to find other ways to pay for retirement.

With no pension and inadequate Social Security payments, the only option for most people is to turn to investment and savings. Fortunately, there are the employer 401k, as well as IRA accounts. These are the most common means of funding retirement in the new retirement reality.

The Importance of a Retirement Plan

Due to the fact that funding your retirement is such an essential element of retiring in comfort and not poverty, it is important to create a solid retirement plan long before you expect to retire. A retirement plan is like a roadmap to help you get from where you are now, to where you want to be when you are ready to retire.

A good retirement plan will include:

• A retirement portfolio that consists of investment, savings, and social security.
• A realistic budget that you can stick with; as part of this budget you will have a withdraw rate from your retirement funds that will ensure that you live comfortably, but that your money will last for the rest of your life.
• A plan for what you intend to do while in retirement, such as travel, start a new business, or attend school, etc.

It is a reality that the retirees of the future won’t be handed the golden egg when they hang up their work boots, but you can still live through retirement comfortably if you plan early and wisely.

The Bonfrisco Law Firm is a member of the American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys.

Today, senior citizens are paying more than ever for the care they receive in later life. To help combat that you can now get long-term care insurance. The advantage of having this type of insurance is that you will be covered if you have to enter a care facility, and with insurance your assets are protected for your spouse or heirs.

In addition to these advantages, having long term care insurance ensures that you will have more options when it comes to quality healthcare, plus your children will not be put in financial jeopardy while trying to meet the expense of your care.

The long-term care insurance that you get will have to meet certain criteria to qualify for favorable tax treatment, which will let you deduct the premiums as an expense, plus it excludes the benefits received from federal income tax. To qualify, the insurance policy must:

• Be renewable
• Not provide the same coverage that you could get with Medicare. It can only offer the same coverage if Medicare is used as secondary coverage
• Refunds should reduce your premiums or provide additional coverage

In addition to these provisions you will want to ensure that the long-term care insurance that you buy provides the government mandated, consumer protection provisions. The policy should guarantee renewal and non-cancellation, cover treatment of existing conditions, offer protection against inflation, and not allow for post-claim underwriting. In addition to these provisions, there are several others in place that will protect you against the unscrupulous practices of some insurance companies so make sure you have done your research and know what provisions should be in your policy.

Choosing a long-term care insurance policy can be a little confusing due to the fact that there are several different types of policies available. To find an insurance policy that will give you the coverage you need is important to ensure that you understand what is covered.

Ask the following questions.

• Will there be a limit on what the insurance company will pay?
• When will the insurance begin to cover long-term care expenses?
• When can the insurance company raise the premiums?
• What expenses are you going to be responsible for?

Buying insurance can be complicated, especially if you don’t know what to look for in an insurance policy. Keep in mind when you are searching for a long term care insurance policy that the insurance companies are out to make money so it is up to you to make sure that the policy you buy provides you with the protection you are paying for.

The Bonfrisco Law Firm is a member of the American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys.

When you start nearing your retirement years one of the main questions you might have is how much money will you actually need when it comes to retirement. Although this is an important consideration, no one can really answer that question for you. Everyone’s needs and lifestyles are different, and it is these things that will determine how much money it will take for you to retire.

Yet, even though your needs as far as retirement are different that anyone else’s, there are some things that you can look at that will help you get some idea of the amount of money you will need before you can retire.

One of the basic rules of retirement is that you will need about 80% of what you are currently earning; so if you make $60,000 a year now, you will need about $48,000 a year in order to retire. Of course this is assuming that your home is paid and you no longer have anyone at home that you have to support.

There are situations that could require that you have more money that this after retirement, such as if you have plans to travel a great deal, or medical conditions that will add to your expenses.

Another way to get a little more accurate view of how much money you will need to retire is to calculate what your expected expenses are, compared to what your expected income will be. If you are coming up short on income compared to expenses, you will need to find a way to increase that income before you can safely retire.

If you find that you won’t have enough money to retire you don’t need to panic, as there are some steps you can take to improve your financial situation. If your employer has a 401k, consider adding more money to this plan, as well as putting more money in your IRA. For those that are already too close to retirement for this strategy to help much, you might want to consider delaying retirement for a few years. This will help your current investments grow, plus you will increase the amount of money you get with Social Security payments. A delay of a few years can help improve your financial situation immensely.

No one wants to work more years than what they planned before they are able to retire, but you might find that it will be worth it. Not only will you be earning extra money during this time, but you will still be covered by your employer’s healthcare plan, which will save you some money.

To avoid this problem it is always best to start planning for retirement as early as possible, the longer you are saving money and investing, the more money you will have when you retire.

The Bonfrisco Law Firm is a member of the American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys.