Are you Retirement Ready?
Written and accurate as at: Sep 26, 2023 Current Stats & Facts
Are you in the later stages of your working life? Starting to think of ‘pulling the pin’? If so, you should start assessing whether you are ‘retirement ready’. This means being financially ready as well as emotionally ready.
After 40 odd years of work, it’s a massive change to your psyche and daily routine to retire. The regular rhythm of getting up and going to work is gone and you need to occupy your days, weeks, months and years. Have you started to develop a range of interests outside of work? It’s better to start getting into different things before you retire so you’ll have time to try different things and your mind has time to accept that this is what you’ll be doing more of in retirement. These interests could be sporting, social, clubs, volunteering, helping the kids and grandkids. Even in small towns there are lots of opportunities to pursue things that you’ve always liked, even if you’ve never tried them before because you were too busy working.
In our experience moving gradually into retirement by going from full time to part time work can help make a smoother transition mentally. The super system is set up to help with this and you can access your super while still working.
Being financially ready for retirement means getting some answers to the big questions. Do we have enough cash, super or investments to fund the lifestyle we want in retirement? How much will we need for our day to day expenses and how much can we allow for fun money for what we want to do on top of that? What are the rules for accessing your super, making top up contributions from the sale of assets and how does Age Pension really work? How does investing really work? What do they really mean by risk with investments and how can we minimise risk in retirement?
If you’re planning on selling a business to help fund your retirement, are you prepared for that? Have you consulted with your accountant and a Business Broker and got your figures and the business in a tidy position for sale? These things can take a few years if done properly. Is your estimate of the business value achievable and when combined with your passive investments, how does your overall pot look and will it provide the sort of income you’ll need to fund your planned lifestyle.
Retirement is a huge milestone in life and the better prepared you are the smoother it will go. Come in and have a chat to see if you’re on track.
If you think you could benefit from a discussion with a Financial Planner, give us a call. There’s no obligation, the first meeting is free and all fees are spelled out clearly in advance. If you’re not sure, try our Financial Fitness Survey on our website at www.eclipsefp.com.au as it’s a simple free tool to help assess your financial strength.
