Retirement Planning
Planning for retirement becomes an important aspect of Financial Management. If we feel happy that we will be living longer, we need to take enough care to plan money to sustain till then. With the rising life expectancy and increase in the medical expenses with ageing, Retirement Planning becomes inevitable. The nuclear family structures makes the life a lonely one physically, mentally, emotionally and last but not the least – Financially. Irrespective of what we earn, spend and save in our prime age, we only spend, spend and spend between 60 years of age to 90 years of age. As much as dying early creates sadness in us living must long create fear in us, from a financial perspective. Retirement, per se, is the most enjoyable stage in life since you can do whatever you desire to do rather than have to do what is expected from you. Retirement can totally be a new beginning when you have enough money in hand to sustain yourself completely. At the same time, retirement can be the end of life if you still have to run in search of money at that stage and age of life. We need to save in a disciplined manner in the earlier part of life and withdraw in a disciplined manner during the latter part of the same. We are never too young to plan for our retirement since it is as inevitable as ageing. Retirement Planning must be done right from the early stages of life.
During the first stage of life, all of us get married as young people and wish to enjoy every inch of life in the maximum possible manner. Retirement planning appears to be something that is too early to think of. However, this is the period when your earning capabilities are at high and you can allocate money for savings. Time is never a factor of concern during this stage. All these make this stage the right one for retirement planning.
During the second stage of our life, we become the proud parents of our children. As children grow up, we tend to complete our commitments towards them and reach the pre-retirement stage gradually. Saving during the second stage of life with varied commitments towards children may pose a great challenge to plan for retirement planning. However, this is again a right stage to plan for your retirement.
The third stage which is the pre retirement stage is when you have to seriously think about the choice you have for cost cutting and crunching more numbers for savings. And then comes retirement with all its valor and strength checking our capability to sustain the rest of our life as successfully as we managed all throughout our earlier life. At each of the stage above, life keeps throwing challenges on us making us consider retirement planning as our last priority. No stage is too early to start planning for retirement. However, delaying to initiate retirement planning may be too late as time passes by.