Making decisions about how to handle your investments can cause stress. Finding the right balance in your portfolio does not have to be difficult. Review your investments regularly to monitor how well your investments are performing.
Avoid the traditional pension your grandfather had. Older pensions were based on a single factor. Believe it or not there are still some out there. Make sure your investments are diversified in at least three different fund types.
Take full advantage of your employer’s retirement plan. Often, employers match up to 3 or 4 percent of the employee’s contribution. This alone will give you a 3 or 4 percent increase on your income even if growth were to become stagnant.
Some financial institutions offer retirement planning as a service. Great Plains Lending has tools available and representatives that will help you find ideas specific to your situation to help stretch your investment dollars. These services are imperative as we attempt to become a generation that is not dependent upon Social Security programs.
One unpopular but sometimes necessary way to handle your investment more cautiously is to delay retiring for a few years. Continue to make contributions to your portfolio during these extra years of work. Contributing an extra $15,000 per year can increase your chances of having a retirement fund to last you into your 90’s by 88 percent.
Once you have made the decisions of which investment opportunities to explore, stretch your dollars by making a purposeful determination about where to retire. Some places in the United States are less expensive to live in than others. For example, living in Weatherford, Texas is about 13 percent less expensive than living in Boise, Idaho, according to the October edition of Money magazine.