Realistically Evaluating Your Financial Readiness for Retirement
Approaching retirement can be an intimidating process for many folks. The Olympic Area Agency on Aging’s Director of information and assistance, Mark Harvey, understands this and deals with quite a few folks deliberating on their preparedness to take that step (or plunge, as many view it!) In his counseling on this subject, Harvey points out that “this is 2019 and this is America. Money counts.”
This emphasis on money and financial planning is well-founded, since many studies have shown that a large portion of Americans aging into their retirement years have not accumulated enough wealth to ensure a comfortable retirement. Harvey’s article characterizes this as a kind of “oops” that is often overlooked prior to pulling the trigger on retirement, leading potentially to some very uncomfortable years of retired life.
Planning is the key to avoiding this “oops” situation, and it starts with a careful evaluation of one’s financial situation as early as possible in the pre-retirement cycle. Harvey offers a set of points to help you organize your approach to this planning process, beginning with a thorough analysis of the information available to you from the Social Security Administration. He then goes into assessing your debt situation as a means to understand your net financial picture.
Harvey sums his thoughts with this telling statement, “What we want to do is avoid ugly surprises that often come six to 12 months into what was supposed to be a reasonably happy retirement.” Read his full article, posted on thedailyworld.com, here…