Financial Preparation Tips for Your Retirement

When our parents retired, they had it easy! Back in their days, the world of finance wasn’t a complicated one. For our generation, although we have more control over our retirement funds, we also have more responsibility for them too.

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We have to keep an eye on inflation, interest rates and stock & bond markets, so that we know how well (or badly) they will affect our individual retirement accounts – or IRAs for short – or 401(k)s. And above all, we also need to constantly check that we will have enough money to pay our bills during our twilight years, and even our Social Security too!

Organising our financial futures can be quite complicated at times, but to make your life a bit easier I have listed some tips to help you prepare for your retirement.

When to apply for Social Security

Many financial experts keep telling us that we should wait a while before applying for any Social Security benefits. Did you know that you receive around a 7% increase for each year you delay applying for Social Security benefits, from 62 to 70 years of age?

These days, you would find it pretty hard to get an investment with such a great return, no matter how clever you were with your investing! However, there are many reasons why people apply for Social Security sooner rather than later. Apart from needing the money, many just want to quit their jobs and retire. But if you are happy with your job and are in good shape, then it makes sense to keep working for as long as possible to enjoy such lucrative Social Security benefits.

Keep some of your savings in gold

If you are worried about stock market investments going south due to the volatile nature of such investments, you should consider having a gold IRA. Many governments around the world (the US government included) keep stocks of gold reserves because they are so valuable and can be sold in times of crisis; these governments wouldn’t keep such stocks of gold if they thought they were not worth much!

There are many gold IRA companies around that can help you plan for your future by setting up a gold IRA with you; trust me, you’ll be very glad that you did keep some of your savings in gold!

Keep a stash of cash

It’s a bad idea to keep all of your money in one type of investment, so what you should be doing is keeping a sum of money either somewhere safe in your home, or in a federally-insured bank deposit (recommended).

You probably won’t get a huge amount of interest on your cash savings, but at least you know that they will be somewhere safe.

Limit your risk

Retirement is about taking it easy in life, so don’t go and invest your cash in investment opportunities that are extremely attractive; as Judge Judy sometimes says – if something is too good to be true, it usually is!