Retirement Planning

What Is Retirement Planning?

Retirement planning is the process of determining retirement income goals, and the actions and decisions necessary to achieve those goals. Retirement planning includes identifying sources of income, sizing up expenses, implementing a savings program, and managing assets and risk. Future cash flows are estimated to gauge whether the retirement income goal will be achieved. Some retirement plans change depending on whether you’re in, say, the United States, or Canada, which has its own system of workplace-sponsored plans. Retirement planning is ideally a lifelong process. You can start at any time, but it works best if you factor it into your financial planning from the beginning. That’s the best way to ensure a safe, secure—and fun—retirement. The fun part is why it makes sense to pay attention to the serious and perhaps boring part: planning how you’ll get there.

Remember that retirement planning starts long before you retire—the sooner, the better. Your “magic number,” the amount you need to retire comfortably, is highly personalized, but there are numerous rules of thumb that can give you an idea of how much to save.6 People used to say that you need around $1 million to retire comfortably. Other professionals use the 80% rule (i.e., you need enough to live on 80% of your income at retirement). If you made $100,000 per year, then you would need savings that could produce $80,000 per year for roughly 20 years, or a total of $1.6 million, including the income generated by your retirement assets. Others say most retirees aren’t saving anywhere near enough to meet those benchmarks and should adjust their lifestyle to live on what they have.