The Nation’s Top Retirement Experts Share 3 Keys to Success
Written by
J. Arky
Edited by
Cory Dudak
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Making the most of your retirement all comes down to being set up for success. Having the right tools or keys to reach that level requires thought, planning, dedication, and in some cases, trusting your instincts. Don’t take our word for it — many of America’s best retirement experts are sharing their wealth of knowledge with the world regarding the best ways to plan for a golden age experience of post-work.
Here are the nation’s top retirement experts sharing three keys to success:
Visualize Your Retirement
Start by picturing what your life in retirement is going to look like, then create habits and practices that will guide you towards making that vision a reality. That’s according to Christine Benz, the director of personal finance and retirement at Morningstar.
In an interview on the “Decoding Retirement” podcast , Benz explained that “we’re all wired a little bit differently in terms of what we want from our retirement cash flows…” When it comes to retirement, Benz outlined that “…there’s more than one way to do this. … You should give a little thought to what you specifically are looking for.”
Plan Ahead Now To Avoid Problems Later
Fritz Gilbert is the author of “The Keys to a Successful Retirement,” who noted that you should not wait until you are about to retire to start planning how your retirement will go.
In Gilbert’s view, you must plan ahead in order to avoid some pitfalls that you might regret later on, such as not saving enough, carrying debt into retirement, or retiring or taking Social Security too early. “A bit of planning goes a long way. An effective plan is regularly reviewed, modified as appropriate and followed,” wrote Gilbert in his Retirement Manifesto blog.
Optimism Is Essential
Michael Finke, a professor at the American College of Financial Services, explained to Wealth Management in a recent video that everyone who is planning to retire should try to focus on the positive outcomes ahead of them, keeping a hopeful and open mind for the future.
“…whether that is saving 10% of your income for retirement. Whether you took a significant amount of investment risk in your portfolio. Even whether or not you valued some kind of lifetime income protection … those people who were more optimistic felt they were going to be happier in their 80s and 90s,” Finke noted.
Finke continued that people who kept this post-career mindset “felt more optimistic about what their lifestyle was going to be like in retirement. So that actually motivated them to make a number of different behavior changes that were consistent with living better in the future.”
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