One of the questions I receive is how do I preserve my income in my retirement years? Here is a brief overview of my answer.
Five Ways to Preserve Your Income
One of the most important steps you can take to secure a safe, comfortable retirement is to find a way to generate a sustainable living income. In this series, I want to help you learn how to preserve your income over the long term.
Today, let’s take a look at some of the topics we’ll be covering in more detail in future briefs. Each of these secrets will help you preserve your income so you can be happy and comfortable throughout your retirement years.
Secret One: Create a Budget
It doesn’t matter how big your income is, if you spend more than you bring in, you will end up in debt or even out of money way before your retirement years are over. In the next installment in this series, I’m going to give you some simple tips on creating a postretirement budget that works with your income—not against it.
Secret Two: Get the Most Out of Social Security
For years you worked and contributed to Social Security and now it’s your turn to get something out of the system. But don’t just take the first amount you’re offered. In the third installment of this series, you’ll learn how to make choices that maximize your Social Security payments.
Secret Three: Supplement with Life Insurance
In the fourth installment, I’ll show you how the right kind of life insurance policy can provide an effective, tax-free fund to help supplement your postretirement income needs from time to time.
Secret Four: Get an Annuity
No matter how disciplined you are, it’s almost impossible to ensure you’ll get a lifetime’s worth of income out of your savings without having an annuity. In the fifth installment, I’ll tell you about how an annuity can protect your principal and guarantee your income payments.
Secret Five: Rethink Your Lifestyle
The lifestyle you want and the lifestyle you can afford may be two different things. That’s not necessarily bad news, as you’ll learn in the sixth installment where we’ll discuss some of the simple lifestyle changes you can make that allow you to live comfortably on your new postretirement income.
Creating your fixed, lifetime income is just the first step. Next is managing that income so it lasts and you never have to face the financial insecurity endured by so many seniors in retirement.
The INCOME PRESERVATION SECRETS series will help you maximize your postretirement income so you can live comfortably.