Your health
The best early retirement planning assumes you are doing everything you can to stay healthy. The cheapest insurance is exercising and eating right.
This may shock you but eating right, at home with goods from the perimeter of the grocery store, is much cheaper than eating out or consuming fast food that is not good for you.
This is a win win folks…exercise is cheap to free and eating right is much cheaper than eating unhealthy food. (more…)
While you are still working it is important that you think about the golden days. That is the days when you will stop working and relishing all your accomplishments. To make this day as happy as possible it is important that you have constant source of income. This is why it is important that you get in retirement planning as early as possible. In this article I will be providing more information on this topic so as to help you plan these important days of your life.
Your retirement planning should be done as early as possible as this will allow you to invest in a wider range of investments. When you are starting your career you can take more risks with your investments and you will have the opportunities to gain higher earnings. On the other hand if you are a bit older you will be looking for more security instead. (more…)
Most likely, our greatest fear as we are nearing or in retirement can be stated in 8 simple words: “Will I run out of money in retirement?” I can see the wrinkled nose and sweaty palms start to kick in as the stress levels rise after someone asks that question. Moreover, it’s not an easy quantifiable answer. It’s better addressed as “it depends” since it is dependent on various moving parts such as interest rates, inflation, withdrawals, etc. that muddies the income and savings waters.
As a Retirement Counselor, I have to sit back, take a deep breath, and then start to outline the events and circumstances that “could” result in a shortfall of money during your retirement. In this article, I will explain a few of these, along with some ‘traps’ and ‘potholes’ to look out for on the road to (and in) retirement. (more…)
Early Retirement Planning…a common error is people think or are led to believe they are going to continue spending like they are while working.
If it means the difference between staying retired and having to go back to work, you will find a way to stay retired and spend much less than when you worked.
Why am I so sure of this…it is because of the money you waste keeping up with the neighbors and co-workers. Think about it, at work how much money you spend on clothes and cars to keep up appearances. You need to recognize this for the best early retirement planning for you. (more…)
Gordon Brown first introduced his stealth tax abolishing advanced corporation tax credits on pensions in his 1997 budget. Terry Arthur, a fellow of the Institute of Actuaries, estimated that this would reduce the value of UK pension schemes by more than a £100 billion in a paper written for the group. A joint investigation by The Independent on Sunday and BDO Stoy Hayward, the specialist accountancy and business advisory group, has revealed that Mr Brown’s 1997 decision to tax dividends paid into pension funds will have far greater consequences than previously thought. The £100,000 figure represents a reduction of up to 13 per cent in the value of the pension pot a typical employee who pays into a defined contribution scheme could expect to save over the course of their working life.
Furthermore, the amount of companies contributing to final salary schemes have halved under the labour government. On top of this, they decided not to pass an amendment which would have given 8 million women with a partial pension entitlement the chance to make up the shortfall in their National Insurance contributions by making lump sum payments into their national insurance contributions. In fact, pressure is growing for Gordon Brown to step down as James Purnell has become the third cabinet minister to resign according to BBC news, June 5th. In fact, according to their ICM survey, only 29% of the 1,005 adults surveyed thought that Gordon Brown was in touch with ordinary people. (more…)
A question that I hear over and over again is “How to retire early”. Despite many people feeling that an early retirement is just a pipe dream I strongly disagree. It is my honest belief that if you are willing to work hard (and smart), expand your mind with knowledge and do the things that most people don’t then you will no longer have to ask how to retire early. Instead you will be able to inspire your friends and tell them how you managed to retire early.
To retire early it is obvious that you will need to have a passive income or a huge amount of savings (which in turn can be used to create a passive income). The obvious question is ‘how do I find a residual income opportunity’ or how can I create a passive income. There are many ways to achieve this, some more passive than others.
First of all let’s look at how we can get our ‘money to work for us instead of working for money’. (more…)
Many people wrongly think all forms of pension are set in stone and can’t be altered – but there are some helpful mechanisms in place which prove this isn’t always true. Pension transfers are when you switch or change your pension provider and transfer all money from your existing plan to a new one, thereby ending the original plan.
Typically, this can happen naturally if you change jobs and your new job has a different pension scheme, but you can also choose to do it voluntarily. Some of the reasons for doing it yourself might be if your own pension plan charges large administrative costs that you want to avoid by transferring to a pension plan with lower fees or if you want to add a personal pension plan to a work-based pension plan to take advantage of any employer contributions. Or it could simply be because your current pension provider are no longer offering the service. (more…)
Have you ever heard someone make the statement, “Social Security won’t even be around for you.”? As a network markeer, I often hear this statement used in business building, as what I call “the Social Security Myth.” The Social Secuirty Myth is meant to scare you into “realizing” the bleakness of your projected retirement financial. Many of the things about your situation may, in fact, be bleak or close to it, and many of the sobering facts you are forced to realize about your financial situation may be true, but the statements about Social Security are not. Here’s why.
According to the 2006 Social Security Administration’s Trustee Report, with no changes to the program, Social Security will be able to pay 100% of benefits until 2040. At that point, the revenues collected would still allow for benefits to be paid at a rate of 74%, again with no changes to the program. Further, the program would additionally be able to afford payment of 70% of benefits through 2080. In reality, the picture is not quite as bleak as is often painted. (more…)
Gordon Brown first introduced his stealth tax abolishing advanced corporation tax credits on pensions in his 1997 budget. Terry Arthur, a fellow of the Institute of Actuaries, estimated that this would reduce the value of UK pension schemes by more than a £100 billion in a paper written for the group. A joint investigation by The Independent on Sunday and BDO Stoy Hayward, the specialist accountancy and business advisory group, has revealed that Mr Brown’s 1997 decision to tax dividends paid into pension funds will have far greater consequences than previously thought. The £100,000 figure represents a reduction of up to 13 per cent in the value of the pension pot a typical employee who pays into a defined contribution scheme could expect to save over the course of their working life.
Furthermore, the amount of companies contributing to final salary schemes have halved under the labour government. On top of this, they decided not to pass an amendment which would have given 8 million women with a partial pension entitlement the chance to make up the shortfall in their National Insurance contributions by making lump sum payments into their national insurance contributions. In fact, pressure is growing for Gordon Brown to step down as James Purnell has become the third cabinet minister to resign according to BBC news, June 5th. In fact, according to their ICM survey, only 29% of the 1,005 adults surveyed thought that Gordon Brown was in touch with ordinary people. (more…)
Social Security is a benefit program sponsored by the federal government in the US which provides a number of benefits for the older adults.
According to recent surveys, more than 3 million retirees and aged Americans are opting for Social Security benefits. Additionally you can as well supplement the benefits with other retirement plans like stock investments, annuities, IRAs, real estate investments, 401k plans and so on. This will add to your savings and make you more financially dependent. In most cases, the benefits comprise pensions, retirement incomes, benefits for the disabled and so on. (more…)
