Pre-Retirement

Pre-Retirement is a time when many individuals and couples get more focused on saving for a retirement and paying off home mortgages.

Here are some tips to help:

Use Catch-Up Contribution to Accelerate Savings Goals

A catch-up contribution is a type of retirement savings contribution that allows people over 50 to make additional deposits to their 401(k) and/or individual retirement accounts.

Review Insurance Needs and Cash Values

Pre-retirement is a time when individuals should review their life insurance needs, as children may be grown and gone and asset values may be more significant. This is a time when many individuals find that they either have too much or too little insurance due to significant life events or that they want to redeploy insurance cash values into annuities and income producing portfolios.

When to Stop Work

This is a critical decision, so make sure it is considered carefully. At Fintrust, our retirement planning experience has taught us that this is the most impactful decision on retirement outcomes an individual can make. A year of work can mean one more year of savings for retirement, one less year of spending from investments, and thirty more years of compounding on savings.

Include Housing Decisions in Your Planning

Many use pre-retirement as a time to pay-off home mortgages. This is also a time to consider potential future living arrangements, housing needs, and the emotions one may have towards one’s home.

Fully Fund HSA Accounts

Healthcare is typically the primary expense for retirees, so fully funding Health Savings Accounts can be beneficial.

Understand Your Benefits

As you begin to consider your retirement, you need to understand benefit program rules for Social Security and Medicare and any pensions to which you might be entitled.

Understand Time Horizons

The average retiree today spends nearly 20 years in retirement, so understand that you may still have a long investment time horizon even when you retiree.