A comfortable retirement is something that everyone looks forward to. Yet, the process involved in retirement planning and accumulating adequate savings can be stressful. For those engaged in industries like oil and gas or dealing with landed property or agriculture, there could be a substantial amount of wealth that one accumulates over a lifetime, but allocating the wealth accordingly is the key to reaping its benefits when you need them the most.
Why Is Investing for Retirement Crucial?
With adequate retirement planning, you can ensure that you can meet your income goals even when you have stopped working actively in your career. You may have secondary sources of income, but your primary source will stop after a certain age.
With retirement planning, you can implement a savings program, manage assets like your land, and assess the risks that come with working in the oil or gas industry. You will ensure a regular cash flow, and you can sit back and enjoy the benefits of all those years of effort.
However, to do so, you need some strategies for proper investment, and you should start that as early as possible.
Understanding How Much You Will Need after Retirement
The amount of money that you will need after retirement depends entirely on your lifestyle and your responsibilities thereafter. Someone who lives a minimalist lifestyle but needs a corpus for medical treatments will have very different requirements from someone who wants to travel the world and provide for their children’s higher education.
Percentage of Savings
A common rule of thumb is that you will need at least enough to live on 80% of your income during retirement for fifteen to twenty years. You should consider saving more if you also take inflation into account. While many people think about giving up their lifestyles in retirement, doing so will only make you unhappy.
It is better to consult a professional who will take your present sources of income into account and use that as a blueprint to chalk out your personalized retirement plan. They will consider the future expenses you are likely to have at that point, including your household expenses, health insurance, and other sources of income, to come up with a tailor-made plan for you.
Understanding Your Options for Retirement Plans
The retirement plan of a salaried employee will differ from that of a farmer, and a self-employed person’s retirement plan will look very different from that of someone working with natural resources or other kinds of field jobs.
Understanding your retirement account options is the crux of proper planning, but this is the most overwhelming part of the process. Your employer may offer you certain retirement benefits, but if you work independently, you do not have that option.
For example, individual retirement accounts (or IRAs, and 401(k) plans), though very effective, cannot be considered investments. You will have to purchase the investments on their behalf.
It would be best to consider the taxes, and a professional can help you choose tax-advantaged accounts. In these accounts, you only have to pay taxes on the money you withdraw during the retirement period and not on the contributions you make toward them.
On the other hand, you may opt for defined-benefit or pension plans. If you are a salaried employee in the oil and gas sector, your employer may fund these plans for you, subject to state jurisdictions. Although they are not very common outside the public sector, you may ask your investment and retirement planner about them.
Investment Planning
While setting up a fund for retirement is important, it is also a good idea to look at investments that will give you returns in the long term. You can look at options like annuities, mutual funds, stocks and bonds, Exchange-Traded funds, and cash investments. You may also opt for Dividend – Reinvestment Plans or DRIPs.
All these plans have their benefits and tax rules, but when chosen wisely, they will yield enough to provide you with a good income during your retirement.
Planning Strategies
When you plan well and in advance, you will have no problem saving enough for your retirement. First, you need to identify your financial goals, which will help you decide on a figure to keep setting aside each month. This will be in addition to an emergency fund so that you do not have to break into your retirement fund in case something unfortunate happens in the meantime.
Ideally, you should save at least 15% or a little more each year from your current income to build your retirement corpus. You should also set aside enough for bigger expenses like a travel plan or funding your children’s college—in case you do not want to opt for educational loans.
While many curb their present expenses to make room for their retirement fund later, a professional will help you form a growth mindset where you can plan your future without compromising on your present.
Diversification
You may need to be made aware of the different investment opportunities available to you. Still, there are plenty of options, like investing in government bonds, Treasury bills, and large-cap stocks, to name a few. Moreover, what is the right age to claim your social security, depending on your needs?
Do you pay for your health insurance, which is highly likely if you are self-employed as a farmer, or is it funded by your employer? Understanding the diverse ways you can invest depending on your income opportunities will help you pave a better future.
At South Star Wealth Management, we are committed to making our clients’ lives easier and better in the future. Our focus is entirely on our clients, and whether you are a farmer with your source of income coming from your landed property, an official in the oil and gas sector, or a salaried employee in a corporate firm, our team of experts caters to all kinds of clients from all walks of life. We will develop a customized retirement plan for you and help you create an investment portfolio that will help you meet your financial needs post-retirement.
Call us today if you need expert investment and retirement planning consultation, and we will do our best for you.