Finance is important no matter how old you are. However, most of the advice out there is all about life before you turn 55, and the financial decisions that you will need to make. What about the things that you actually want to accomplish? What are going you going to do with your life as it stands in the here and now? Don’t you want to make sure that you actually have the power to enjoy a great retirement? Of course you do, and that’s why we came up with a few more tips to think about after you’ve turned 55 and started on the path to enjoying your retirement.
First and foremost, your retirement portfolio still matters. You will want to start looking at strategic and systematic withdrawals that still leave you with enough principal left in your accounts to keep growing. A lot of people assume that once you hit retirement, you just withdraw all of the money. However, that really isn’t the case at all. You’re going to want to make absolutely sure that you focus on the bigger picture here, and that’s going to be making absolutely sure that you take only what you need.
Yes, that means that you’re going to have to keep a budget. You’re going to need to look at the lifestyle you want. Of course, if you’ve already been looking at your finances, then this doesn’t really be that big of a deal. However, it might be a shocker if this is the first budget that you’ve ever created for yourself. It’s better to make sure that you have things taken care of versus just leaving them to chance. It’s smarter to just focus on the things you need, the things you want, and the best way to tie both concepts together.
By this point, you should either have slashed your debts down dramatically, or have a strong plan in place to get rid of the debts that you have. If you’re already operating within a fixed framework, then extra debt is just going to make your life harder than what it should be. You really want to be able to get out of debt before this point in your life, but if you can’t, you just have to work with what you have.
Checking over your financial statements is going to be even more important for a number of different reasons. One, you don’t want to be the only person that doesn’t know anything about your money. Another point to make here is that identity theft is on the rise, and he group that gets hit hardest are those over 55 — senior citizens, in other words. Some people feel that this is a group filled with easy targets, because there’s not always someone else to look after the elderly. Yet if you’re trying to be as savvy as possible, you don’t need anyone to look after you — you have the power to change your own situation.
It can be difficult to make sense of all of the different financial decisions you’re going to need to make, but that’s okay — you have the power to get things done!