“Take up the challenge and get on track for financial independence.”
Whether you’re 30 or 39, retirement will come up fast. Many people are surprised when they see how much they need to put away to keep their current standard of living in retirement.
Once you decide when you want to retire, you need to calculate how much money you’ll need and how you’ll get there. Of course, you should take advantage of company matching and various tax deductions, when saving for retirement. Don’t wait until your 40s or 50s to try to catch up. That will be painful, or worse, impossible.
Forbes’s recent article, “3 Steps To Financial Fitness In Your Thirties,” advises that when you start to accumulate wealth, be sure someone is watching your investments and that those investments are suitable for your time frames and financial goals.
Work with a fiduciary advisor you think can help improve your situation. This should be someone you trust, and most important of all, who you feel has your best interests at heart.
If you are accumulating assets, make sure they’re protected. Be certain you and your family are covered by having the correct insurance policies. Of course, in a perfect world nothing would happen. For instance, most people on disability would much rather be healthy. They’d love to be able to joke and say that having that disability insurance was a “bad investment”. However, those who are disabled and aren’t covered with a disability insurance policy, most likely wish they’d made sure they had this income protection in place.
Another form of protection is an emergency fund. If you don’t have one, start by regularly putting some amount of money into a non-retirement account. Even if it’s a small amount, something is better than nothing. If you were to be laid off, chances are that your unemployment benefits would not be enough to pay the rent or make a mortgage payment.
If you’re single, you should protect yourself—even more so than someone who has a partner to rely on. Many life insurance policies have living benefits that can protect you, if an emergency happens. You may also be able to use cash value life insurance to partially fund your retirement.
Finally, it’s critical that you think about estate planning. You should have an estate plan, including a will, Powers of Attorney, health care power of attorney and, if you have minor children, a guardian should be named in your will.
Let’s say you’re living with someone. If something happens to either of you, the living partner will most likely will be treated as a roommate—and have no legal rights to your property. An estate plan can be prepared to provide your partner with legal protection.
Reference: Forbes (December 17, 2018) “3 Steps To Financial Fitness In Your Thirties”
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