Retirement Financial Planning – It's Never Too Late to Start

Retirement financial planning is becoming increasingly challenging as the value of investments fluctuate wildly, world economies become more and more unstable and life expectancy continues to increase.

A scary statistic is that only 5%, or 1 in 20, of all retired people will have enough money to maintain their pre-retirement lifestyle.

So unless you are one of this small minority your financial planning for retirement is a very important part of your total retirement planner.

Too many people incorrectly believe that your financial or investment adviser, is the ideal person to create your retirement plan. Unfortunately I've learned through experience that this isn't true.

They may produce a very fancy looking, personalised financial retirement planning document … but there's a lot more to retirement financial planning than a rosy set of financial predictions filled with dubious assumptions!

Steven Austad, of the University Of Texas Health Science Center, told BBC World Service's Discovery programme that the life span for a human being may be much longer than most people have considered possible.

He said that he was virtually certain that some children alive now would live to the year 2150 .... to age 150!

Just imagine having to plan for a 90 year retirement?

Some of my past experiences with retirement financial planning “experts” have had some pretty dismal consequences.

• An investment that over a period of 5 years grew a lot less than inflation;
• A cash investment of $700 000 which shrunk by 35% in 15 months.

In both cases the financial advisers did everything they could to convince me that this was through no fault of theirs! The performance of the funds they invested in was acceptable based on the indexes.

So, as long as they were doing better than the average index then they were doing okay?

Meanwhile my loss was real money ... not an index!

Living longer, means more living expenses and more health care costs. It may also include long term frail care or assisted living - costs that can quickly gobble up any assets.

My mission is to make everyone realise that they have to take an active role in their own retirement financial planning

Firstly you must have a retirement plan.

Then you should review all of your circumstances and progress against your retirement planning targets at least annually.

But don't micro manage the plan. This isn't a day to day or even month to month review and should probably not be done more often than twice a year. In this review vigorously check whether there have been any significant changes in the assumptions and risks. If there are then make adjustments to the plan.

I am also constantly looking to find organisations and specialists in this market who provide honest, reliable and value for money retirement financial planning services for individuals.

If you have any doubts about your retirement finances start making contingency plans as early as possible. These could include;

• Postponing your retirement
• Finding an additional source of income
• Looking for an opportune time to sell your property and downsize
• Reducing living expenses
• Investigating the option of moving to one of the many attractive cheap retirement places around the world.

Reduce your plan to writing. The moment you complete this, you will have definitely given concrete form to the intangible desire
~ Napoleon Hill

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