The First Retirement Planning Question

It always is nice when the rest of the financial world begins to catch on to what I’ve been teaching my Retirement Watch readers.

Many years ago, I began telling people that the first issue in retirement planning is deciding how you want to live in retirement. You can’t determine a realistic spending plan until you determine how you want to devote your time. That’s the key factor in estimating how much retirement will cost. For example, someone who plans to travel a lot is likely to spend more than someone who plans to stay near home. The list goes on. All the other decisions in a retirement plan flow from having an estimate of the cost of your planned retirement.

Recently, I’ve seen this advice repeated several times in financial publications, often with the implication that it was a new or innovative thought. I’m glad it’s being more widely adopted and helping more people, but I’m even more glad that my readers benefited from this advice before others did.

That brings this month’s visit to a close. I’ll be back next month with the results of my latest research and studies, bringing you fresh strategies to increase your financial independence and create the retirement you desire.

P.S. You’ll want to sign up for the Retirement Watch Spotlight Series, because the latest two episodes are especially popular. There is my detailed semiannual investment and economic review in which I lay out where the economy and markets are heading and what is the best investment for today.

There also is my explanation of how to establish a retirement paycheck with lifetime, guaranteed income, regardless of what’s happening in the markets.

The Spotlight Series consists of online seminars in which I present key retirement financial issues in detail. You can view these webinars whenever you want from wherever you can access the internet. To learn more about the Spotlight Series, go to the top of the RetirementWatch.com home page, and select the Spotlight link.