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Retirement Planning for Singles

Retirement is a big deal for anybody, and that's especially true for single people who may be retiring with just one income and who may have built up a nest egg solely off their own savings. So, we know that single people can and do retire comfortably. In fact, one quarter of people over age 60 are living alone in their household, and that number is slightly higher for women, and that's, of course, due to women's longevity. So what we're going to talk about here is retirement for single people. First, we'll go over some averages to give you a rough idea of what the landscape looks like for single people, then we'll get into how much money you might need as you go into retirement, then we'll talk about some tips that can help improve the chances of retiring comfortably. Let's start with the average retirement income for single people. So it's $42,000 on average for an individual in retirement, and that comes from the US Census Bureau. The median is a little bit lower at $27,000.

So a friendly reminder of how this works: The median is the middle, so if you line up all of the survey results, people telling you what their income is, for example, that arrow points at the middle observation, which would give us the median down at the bottom. But if we go to the average, that is going to get skewed by, in this case, wealthy people, for example, they have a very high income.

When it comes to Social Security, the average is about $1,500 a month or $18,000 per year.Your level depends, of course on your earnings, if you had higher earnings during your working years, then you tend to potentially have a bigger benefit than that, and it could be lower, and then of course, your claiming age is also an important thing. If you claim early at age 62, you get a reduced benefit. That's likely to bring down the amount you get. Next, we have pensions, some people get an income from a job they worked at. That might be in the public sector as a teacher, a firefighter, that sort of thing, or even in the private sector, you could have a pension from your job, and those incomes just are all over the board, it could be high, it could be low, but these are different sources of income that people might have in retirement.

This is just a friendly reminder that this is just one video and it may cover some interesting information, but it's not specific to you so I hope you'll do a lot more research, hopefully check with some professionals and get some individualized advice, and that way you can improve the chances of things going well for you. So now let's talk about how much you might need as you go into retirement. Unfortunately, there's no single answer on what you need because it depends. So the first step is to figure out what sort of income you're going to need, and I've got other videos on that, I'll put links in the description to get you some more information, but you can look at replacing a portion of your income, or you can just say, I want X amount of dollars per year, or you can go with other approaches, but first we need to know how much income you are hoping for.

Next, we tally up your income sources, so that might be some guaranteed income that comes in from Social Security, for example, or from your pension at your workplace, but that forms a base of income and that might or might not cover what you need. But it gives us a base and then if we need to fill that in, we can supplement withdrawals from your retirement savings, so that might be out of your IRA, your 401, 403, these accounts that you have built up over time can provide supplemental income to help fill the gap between that guaranteed income you get and the amount you actually want to spend.

There are a number of ways to figure out how much to withdraw and to set up different strategies, there might be bucking strategies, there might be withdrawal strategies like the 4% rule. Or if you don't like that, make it the 3% rule to be safer, or take out more if you think that's not enough and you're selling yourself short. Ultimately, there are a number of ways to approach this, so you just pick one that works well for you, and again, I can point you to some resources on figuring that out. And finally, you will want to look at taxes and inflation, so during your retirement years, it's reasonable to assume that prices may increase on many of the things you buy, so we want your income to be able to increase as well, Social Security typically does rise, but maybe not at the same rate as the things you're buying, so your withdrawals may need to account for that.

Plus we've got taxes. You typically will owe taxes if you're taking distributions or you're taking withdrawals from pre tax retirement accounts. If you have a pension that might be taxable as well. We just want to look at all of these things and figure out what your ultimate money left over to spend each month is going to be. For an over simplified example, let's just look at Jane Doe. She's 60 years old, she's single, she wants to retire in about five years, she makes about 80,000 a year and has 700,000. A lot of people retire with less than that, a lot of people retire with more. I'm going to bring up my financial planning software that I use with clients, and we'll just go over kind of why there's no single answer on how much you need.

Now, if you can tell me exactly how long you'll live and what the markets will do and what inflation will look like, we can tell you exactly what you'll need. But there are a lot of unknowns, so a lot of times we start with a probability of success and I'll go over what that means, and then we look at little tweaks and how different changes might affect that probability of success, so working an extra year might bring her from… Let's say 75% to 84% likely to succeed. Now, success and failure are pretty complicated. They don't necessarily mean that you go completely broke, but you may need to make some adjustments, so let's talk about what does the success mean? We, again, cannot predict the future, so we say, Let's look back and say, You get dealt 1,000 hands. You're playing a game of cards and you get 1,000 hands. Some of those are good and some of those are bad, so the very good ones tend to be up here, near the top. And you actually end up with a lot of money left over.

Some of them are not as good and you end up running out of money early. The median is, again, that one that's right in the middle when we line them up in order for best to worst. And so you might say, you're probably not going to get the best, you're probably not going to get the worst, although anything is possible. So that's how we go with this likelihood of success. Now, maybe she doesn't want to work an extra year, so we can look at different ways of accomplishing things here. By the way, we've built in some long term care in case she does get sick and needs that at the end of life. She's looking to spend about 4,000 a month, that's after some health care costs that are going to inflate each year, and she's saving a decent amount in some 401K and taxable accounts. Let's say she goes ahead and maxes out that Roth, is it going to make a big difference? Not really, 'cause she only has five years left.

So what we do here is we start looking at all of these different variables and playing with the pieces and figuring out what does it take to make her successful at her retirement, or at least successful enough that she's comfortable making that transition. So here are some tips to improve your chances. The first is to plan for long term care. If you're living on your own, you don't have somebody in the house who can help you do things, and it's arguable if even a couple is capable of managing this on their own… I mean, if you think about a couple, is one of the people physically able to move the other person around and do they have the skills to provide health care, and the time and the energy, frankly, to provide all that type of care? So it's important for everybody, but it's especially important for single people to plan for this care.

So you can look at getting insurance, you can look at budgeting for some costs, like we showed you in the software, you might want to budget for a much bigger number if you go into memory care or something like that with 24 hour supervision, it can get really expensive quickly. And you can explore different living arrangements, maybe doing things with friends or certain communities that might be a good fit for you. Next is to avoid leaving money on the table so if you were previously married and your spouse passed away or you've been divorced, you may be eligible for benefits. That's maybe from Social Security, you can potentially get a survivor's benefit, or if you were married for at least 10 years and you've been divorced, you can potentially get spousal benefits on your ex spouse's work record.

It's just important to explore all of these to see if there are any resources available for you. Next is to make a plan, and I am of course biased as a financial planner, but I think it is really helpful to go through the process, and the main goal isn't to get a big document that tells you what your financial plan is. Instead, really, the benefit is going through that process and learning a lot about your finances as you do it, and in that process, you get an idea of what the risks are, how you're doing, you might get confidence and clarity on whether or not you can go ahead and retire, if you should do certain things or not.

It's just a very valuable process for a lot of people, but I'll leave that for you to decide. If you found this video helpful, please leave a quick thumbs up. That gives me feedback that this is something you might enjoy more of, so thanks for watching and take care..

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31 ways to improve Retirement Planning Part 2

Today's video is the continuation of our last week's discussion about ways to improve your retirement planning. Keep in mind that all those 
steps you can use at any point in your life   if you want to put in place some kind of financial plan. If for whatever reason you missed my last week's video part 1   of 31 ways to improve your 
retirement planning, please watch it right now,  maybe even before you commence this video and 
then please return right here to continue Part 2. This will be so much more logical for you.   My name is Katherine Isbrandt from About Retirement,
I am Certified Financial Planner, and you are watching About Retirement TV
just about the only place   that will provide you with honest and open ideas 
how to be well prepared for your retirement or  if you have already retired, how to improve 
your retirement income, assets, and lifestyle. So last week we discussed, 15 ways to improve 
our retirement planning and today I want to share another 16 ideas that I have come up with.

Obviously, there would be tons and tons more,
depending how detailed we want to become but I think this is a very good start for the new year   which I hope you are planning to make it as
one of the best years ever. 16. Be very sceptical of any investing advertised as tax schemes This is how many investors lost a lot of money over the years   Australians are very tax-driven and this 
is how politicians win the elections, they know what and how to promise to their voters. This is how many heavily advertised investment schemes were introduced over the years, where the only party making any profits were product providers with most investors never even checking 
if such schemes were even approved by ASIC   and ATO for specific tax ruling Fortunately, now there are less of those
schemes happening but   that's due to strict regulations that we currently 
have in Australia and a very watchful eye of ASIC.   But often even legitimate schemes might 
not necessarily be of any value for you.   If the main goal of the scheme is to reduce 
your tax with actually not providing you   when any return, either in a form of income, or 
capital growth, bottom line, is you are losing money   So always do your due diligence before you 
invest any of your savings into any of those tax driven schemes.

17. Understand Australian Superannuation tax and legal system This is a very big task and lots of information
to learn not to mention how to find the details that are exactly
applicable to your situation but if you can achieve this, you will be on your
way to utilise every single benefit legally and financially available to you. This is exactly the reason why wealthy families rely on a good professional advice and superb service   18. Include the cost of assisting your 
aging parents and helping your adult children in your budget and in your planning, this is what we call sandwich family.

Have you heard of the naming sandwich family yet? That mostly applies to people aged 50 plus,
but could be of any age really. A sandwich family is the one that 
on one hand needs to care for the elderly parents   while on the other are still looking after 
their teenage children or children that are;  adults but refuse to leave home to start their 
own life and rely on your financial assistance. My recommendation here is to find the best solution 
of care for your parents, there are lots of options   and some may not cost you all that much, but can 
be very beneficial for you and for your parents.   As far as your kids are concerned, of course, if you 
are happy for them to stay with you, do that , but treat them like adults. If they work, and they should, unless they're studying but even then a part-time work experience is really recommended  they should contribute their share to family expenses, to your bills, food, you can decide on 
their contribution value.   You are a parent, you will always be there for them, I am a mother, I would give anything to my son if there was a problem, but as I said they need to learn their independent 
life and you need to look after your needs as well.   19.

Don't withdraw from your retirement 
plan unless you really have to. Every single dollar withdrawn from your retirement plan as an extra above what you really need, will reduce longevity of your savings It is not only the actual value withdrawn, but also loss of all future income and capital growth that those funds could have earned over the years. So just to put it into context, if today, at the age of 60 for example, you withdraw $20,000 to buy a better car, because the one that you have although is it 
is in a good condition, well it bored you a little bit  and you need a change you have just depleted 
your future interest earned on that withdrawal by  $60,775 based on 7% compound interest return
over the period of 20 years   So bottom line is that 
should you kept that $20,000 in your pension fund, at the age of 80 you would have had additional 
$80,775 in your retirement fund.

This amount of money can go a very long way 20. Plan for your long-term care   We have not been talking in detail about any 
expenses that you should consider in your old age,   when you might require additional medical or 
even personal assistance. Whether it is provided at the Aged Care facility or at your home 
you cannot disregard those costs. If you need any assistance in this area, either for your 
parent, or for your partner check out my website article Aged Care Planning with Ease, but I will be 
devoting more time and more videos to this subject.

And if the matter is urgent please just contact me 
immediately. 21. Rebalancing portfolio   This one strategy can assist your portfolio performance more than you could ever expect Rebalancing portfolio at the right time to its original asset allocation setup in your investment plan can be very financially rewarding. So you should implement doing this annually or when the opportune time of
market condition is presenting itself. 22. Check the performance of your investments
or your super at least annually I have been talking about 
this extensively in many of my videos.  Don't make rush decisions based on one year performance of your investment or your super or your pension fund. Even if that one year was disappointing. But annual checks are essential and if underperformance continues over a couple of years   then reassess if this is the right fund for you. Having said that, make sure that your expectations are met with the type of the portfolio, taking into account the investment risk.   And what I mean by that is if 
your portfolio has a conservative asset allocation   don't expect returns of a balance or growth fund 
or returns of the overall share portfolio   This is unfair comparison and you will end up being 
always very disappointed, So make sure you compare apples
with apples and not with oranges for more information watch my video 11 steps to check your superannuation statement.

23. Check fees and charges included
in your investment or your super.  Government has been on the hand for super and 
pension funds that have been overcharging members for their accounts for couple of years now for now, this new legislation applies to MySuper products so what we call default funds but that will be extended to
more superannuation products in coming years. Please watch my video "Fees you pay in super" to have full clarity as to what type of fees most superannuation funds charge. 24. Review charges and cover for insurance in or outside of superannuation.  I have not really been discussing 
insurance in any great length on this channel   as this has never been requested but also as we 
progress in life the need for insurance reduces   But if you still have insurance you really need to understand the cover provided as opposed to the cover required cost payable as opposed to your affordability.

If you require insurance should it be within super or outside? There are many things that need to be taken into consideration before you apply or cancel your insurance, so if insurance is what you need feel free to reach out so we can review what you have and what you need 25. Have a realistic expectation for your retirement. Well what can I say unfortunately we love to believe in miracles   Well for example I cannot save today but I will make it out next year or the year after, well that never happens.

or my money will last me 
forever because my super fund is the best  and has always been provided the best returns.
Well, good luck with this one. Nobody can predict  the market so please start being realistic with your calculations, with your budget that you set up  with the amount of money that you spend and 
how much you actually will need in the future   Once the money is gone it is gone and your 
retirement might take a completely different turn   26. Always include inflation in 
your retirement calculator   When using any calculators, please ensure that CPI (Consumer Price Index) is included.

This will ensure that whatever financial outcome the calculator gives you will be subject to inflation meaning a real value of money in the future. 27. Age Pension is a bonus, not certainty, don't rely on it, but do what you can to get the most out of it. This is my work’s bread and butter, on daily basis, I try to find ways how I can improve my clients Age Pension  Why? Well not because I want our government to pay for your lifestyle,   but because I know very well that this is a guaranteed portion of your income once you are eligible. The more you receive from 
the government the less of your own money you have to spend, hence you are protected with your savings for longer. But Age Pension should be a bonus, don't sacrifice all your savings, all your assets, just to get it It is still better to own and control your 
$2mil portfolio with no Age Pension then to give the 2mil to your kids just to
get Age Pension of $25K.

That is just a ridiculous exchange in my book.  28. Utilise every single benefit you can 
that is available to you from the government   There are many ways how you can benefit from our 
government's policies.  strategies that can reduce your tax, boost your superannuation savings, and support you financially for longer.  Watch my video "Improve your super and reduce tax" as well as "End of Financial Year Zero Risk 50% Return" Easy strategies and yet, so many don't do it.   29. Understand the importance of Estate Planning this is another area that is a huge topic to discuss, I have only scratched the surface with couple of videos  but they're still worth watching. "Wills, are they really necessary?" and
"Super Death Nomination gone terribly wrong".  The second video will tell you exactly why Estate 
Planning is so very important but obviously, it is  not limited to creating a Will or providing Death
Benefit nomination to your superannuation trustee   The more complicated your life has been, the more 
you should pay attention to estate planning and employ specialists to assist you, if you wish your 
assets to be distributed to right beneficiaries in the right way.

30. Do not forget about Aged Care costs
in your retirement planning   I have mentioned Age Care before. We tend to live longer and longer, medical progress keeps us alive for much longer than we might anticipate. But what if you run out of money? What if you need to use services of Age Care facility but you don't have any savings to pay 
for it. This is a big drama for many,   this is why I stress greatly to save aggressively before you retire and spend modestly once you no longer
have a job related income There are many ways to 
assist you in reducing ongoing Aged Care fees,   so if this is your problem, please contact me,
but the fact remains that you do need to include Aged Care expenses
in your planning as well.

31. Always, always work with professionals – accountant, lawyer, financial planner, mortgage broker. Google is just not enough This has always been my motto, I save where I can on things that don't matter or are all of less importance. But I never try to cut down on expenses on any professional service that I need. Good advice, service and support are blessing. Not only you will have things done correctly from 
day one, so no fixing, updating, explaining.   It will be done for your best benefit. There is no trial
and error situation. A good financial planner will  help you to improve your income, capital growth, avoid costly mistakes improve asset security, peace of mind, very often can help you to have access to government benefits that otherwise, you may not be able to access. So always use the best professional that really has your best interest in heart. So voila! This is the list of
31 ways to improve your retirement planning   As I said before this list could be extended 
to many many more points but some of them I have already discussed in my previous videos, hence the links and others we will discuss in more details in the future.  If there is a topic that you believe is really important and somehow i missed it.

Please let me know in the comments below the video, I would really love to hear your opinion and ideas on that topic as well So please don't be shy and let's have an open conversation.  Many people watching this channel are very 
likely in a similar situation to yours   So by answering your question this might help 
another person as well If you enjoy this video, please like it, share it,
and subscribe to my channel.

So you know when my next video is arriving If you want to find more information just jump on my website AboutRetirement.com.au where you can find all my video,  lots of articles all related to the issue of retirement, investing,
Age Pension, Aged Care and lots more And now as usual, please continue watching those informative videos   Fist recommendation is previously mentioned  "Improve your super and reduce tax" to know how to benefit from those government provided strategies for super. The second recommendation are videos about estate planning: "Wills, are they really necessary?" and the answer of course is: yes but listen to the reasons why.

I will be speaking with you in the next video, see you soon. .

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31 ways to Improve Retirement Planning – Part 1 #SavingForRetirement

It is always a great idea to commence a new year 
on the positive note.   As I said in my previous video "Proposed Changes in 2022" I really want all of us to have this New Year 2022
one of the best years ever, financially, emotionally, spiritually, and physically,
but all those components work together.  I know from experience that if my finances are not in order,
if I feel financially drained and insecure, there is no way I will feel 
emotionally happy, fulfilled and satisfied.   So whether we like it or not, money plays a big part 
in our lives and in our well-being, not to mention our choices and abilities
to do something good and positive in the world.

So as I said, I really want to start this New 2022 Year on a positive note, 
and what is a better way than going over steps   how you can improve your retirement planning 
or any financial planning for that matter.  Originally this video started with only 9 steps,
but once I started thinking about it,  all those ideas and suggestions came 
rushing through my head and I thought well, what a great way to slowly improve step-by-step 
your planning system. Some of those listed ideas, I have already covered in parts
in my previous videos, so I will link them all for you, others might be just short information, but some could be
a totally new idea for a completely new video. So today our topic is:
"31 ways how you can improve your retirement planning"   or as I said before any financial planning 
regardless of your stage of life.

As the number has grown from 9 to 31, I will divide this list
between two videos not to make this one too long, so please return next week for part two of today's video… My name is Katherine Isbrandt from About Retirement,
I'm a Certified Financial Planner, and you are watching About Retirement TV,
just about the only place that you can find all the information and ideas how to be well prepared for your retirement or how to improve your retirement, income, assets, 
and lifestyle if you have already retired. So as I said before, today I will cover 15 steps 
you can take to improve your retirement planning,   and next week I will cover the other 16 steps.  1.

Save enough
– have a plan for the future with a defined strategy this is most likely their most important information
in your planning   you really have to have a starting point to know 
what you are striving for, what type of assets,   and what value you need to accumulate by the time 
you plan to retire. Nothing is set in stone but you need to make a solid start
and a very good starting point are my videos: How much do I need to retire" and
"What Income is Needed in Retirement". 2. Understand your longevity and do not underestimate how long you are going to live This is most likely the biggest worry for most retirees   with many thinking of ways how you can make 
your money works harder. If you believe that at the age of 90 you will need a lower income
or lower asset base, well think again. Just watch this video "How long will you live in retirement".

This is one of my older videos, so please be gentle   As I had no video presenting experience, but the 
information is still valid and current as of today.   3. Believe that it is never too late to start planning or saving. Some might think that once you retire there is nothing you can do 
to improve your retirement income and to make your money last longer.
Well, this is an incorrect assumption. Unless you have no assets saved at all,
your situation can always be improved.   I have a whole series of videos related to Age Pension and how you can improve the government benefit or organise your income streams
to provide you with a secure income for life. Feel free to binge-watch the whole series of 14 videos
devoted to this subject Age Pension and your retirement  4.

Make your decisions rationally and not based on your emotions Money is an emotional topic.
We might believe that all our decisions are made rationally   and well thought through but, let's be honest,
whatever decision you make you can always justify it.  And justification comes from the
emotional state of needing to prove to yourself   and everybody around you, that your decision is 
right, even if deep down you know it's not really.   Good planning and sticking to set steps defined 
in your plan can help to remove the emotional distress, and allow you to make your decision 
calmer and to your actual financial benefit. If you are unable to remove your emotions from 
your financial decisions just please admit this to yourself and ask for professional assistance to manage your money,
organise your plan, and check your progress.   You are always involved in 
the decision process but the emotional drama   can be taken away and the financial planner can
cool down your nerves, by removing any uncertainties,  by explaining issues providing you with information research
that will rationally support your decisions.

  That can bring you a great deal of peace of mind while improving your investment portfolio
performance at the same time. 5. Prioritise your own needs and your own retirement
before helping your children to build their wealth. Unfortunately, I see this all the time when parents sacrifice their own lifestyle,
their own level of savings, and assets   in order to help their kids to buy their first home faster,
to pay off their university loans immediately, to have a fabulous wedding. Well, if 
you have sufficient assets to look after yourself   and help your kids at the same time, absolutely, do 
that, congratulation you have done very very well. But if you do this out of parental love, guilt, 
obligation, shame, scarcity, or you are being forced to do it. because the other parents are paying for the wedding,
the other parents are helping with home deposit,  and you feel obligated to do the same. 
Well, I respectfully disagree you have done your duty as a parent, you have raised your kids to be 
a respectful and responsible members of the society,   you have supported them throughout their 
childhood and their young adulthood.

Now it is their turn to take their responsibility and 
create their own lives and their own mistakes You are always there to support them, but you also need to make sure
that you are in a position to look after yourself for as long as you are alive,
because well nobody will come to your rescue.  So it bothers me when I see parents giving 
their savings away to kids to help them   only later to end up on Social Security check
of Age Pension with very little savings left, so they can hardly get by in their retirement.  6. Don't leave money in a bank Well, this one is the most common mistake people make. If you sold an asset and you park your money in cash,
as it will be needed for your next purchase that's what cash is for. Short-term holding.   Another reason to have funds in a bank in cash, it is for your "rainy day and security account" as an emergency fund.

But most people who keep majority of their savings in cash in the bank, 
do this due to fear. So we are going back to the 
previous issue discussed in No.4 decisions need to be made rationally
and not based on your emotional state. There are so many negatives of keeping too much money in cash 
and I would need to prepare a separate video   to go through all those reasons, so we will return 
to this topic again in one of my future videos.  7. Don't carry too much debt into retirement, especially high-interest debt Well, life is life, sometimes there are reasons why
you would still have debt outstanding when retired.  When assisting clients, we do try to have all that's paid off before the big day of retirement arrives
but sometimes it is not possible. If this is the case, then we try to find another option
to assist clients with the level of income,   as whatever repayments you need to meet,
they will reduce your income dramatically   But one of the worst debts you could have in 
retirement or actually any other period of your life, is a credit card debt or any high-interest debt, such as personal loans,
store loans, all those fast loans facilities advertised constantly on TV that 
supposedly can be approved within 5 minutes.   Nothing, and I mean nothing is as urgent to buy to even consider those loans
as some of them carry interest as close as 50%.

But most people don't really bother checking agreements   all they want is that new TV, that new phone, or another holiday. Just watch my video: "How Banks keep you poor – shocking truth" and you will be blown away
by my calculations and my findings   8. Don't retire too early
Early retirement means early spending on their savings.   If you do this then you might run out of money 
while you are still very healthy and full of energy.

You might not have enough savings to pay for your medical care
at the time when you are much older. So please speak with a financial 
planner or financial advisor that can assist you   to figure out when is the most beneficial 
time for you to commence your retirement.   9. Invest well in growth assets. Yes many people in retirement are far too
conservative with their investing, which in most cases comes again from fear and
lack of understanding  of investment choices but a good advice can go a very long way
to improve not only your ongoing retirement income    but the value of your assets 
backing you up for the remainder of your retirement, or as your legacy you wish to 
leave behind for your beneficiaries either to your partner to your children or any other person 
or organization you wish to leave your estate too   I have created a video:
"Investing for Income and Growth in Retirement" that explains the benefits of investing into growth assets but as this topic has been requested by many,
I will create new videos about different forms of investing.   10.

Do not chop and change your investment strategy   This is a sure way of constantly losing money,
when people are trying to keep changing their investments based on some information heard on 
the radio, or on TV, read in the paper or heard from a neighbour.  Investing based on such advice is a sure 
way to keep losing money it is not based on any solid information, it is not based on any research that you might have done. So please stay away from, keep on
jumping from investment to investment you really need to create an appropriate strategy for your needs,
stick to it, but with annual or even semi-annual reviews. 11. Do not participate in panic withdrawals Oh my god don't even get me started on this one.
This is common knowledge.  I'm sure every single person listening to me right now
will agree with me and yet every year,   I see the same mistakes being made.
I meet many people who are telling me how much money they lost, for example during GFC Global Financial Crisis
that happened between 2007 and 2009 or the recent drop in March 2020 due to COVID.t   Those people blame the economy, the market, but the truth of the matter is that once the market drops,
it is too late to sell any investments.   Whoever patiently waited for the market recovery, 
got their money back and more.

It took two years after GFC for the market to recover
and it took only a couple of months after COVID crash. Nobody likes market crashes and volatility 
but it is part of investing and you need to accept it   if you want to see any capital growth of your savings. If you are a person that panics when markets are uncertain   you really need professional service to
help you with your investments   and how to deal emotionally with those market changes
and that's where a good financial planner can assist. 12. Don't try to chase historical performance.

Don't invest into last year winners   most likely this asset or this fund manager
will not be a winner in the following year.  Markets are alive, they change daily, there are 
many forces that impact performance of assets in one year   and decline in the year after.
If you keep on trying to switch between last year winners  your transaction cost will skyrocket 
and you will keep on paying the highest price to buy new investments. This is a sure way to be going backwards
with your performance of your retirement savings 13. Stay away from timing the market.

It is not about timing the market but rather about time in the market 
that will bring you financial benefit. Research shows that those investors that stay invested over long term
in a well-diversified portfolio   will be better off than those trying to guess the market
and trying to benefit from market movements.   When we start talking about shares as I promised,
I will go much deeper into explanation of this topic   14. Diversify, Diversify, Diversify.. Investment diversification is most likely
one of the most important aspects of your investing and it will have the biggest impact on your overall asset security meaning investment risk and 
your portfolio performance and your portfolio of volatility Have you read my eBook "12 Principles of Investing"?
Well if not, I highly recommend for you to download it   and read it cover to cover.
Diversification is most certainly one of those principles   and it is well explained so hopefully 
it will help you in building your investment portfolio    and while you are visiting my website 
AboutRetirement.com.au to download this eBook   feel free to sign up to my newsletter that will 
provide you with all the details you need to be up to date   with all financial data that can impact your retirement.

15. Always include fun in your budget I want to leave today on the happy note, and I believe that as much as it is very important
to be a financially responsible person    we cannot forget that life is meant to be happy, enjoyable, with lots of fantastic memories that 
we create over our lifetime, that we can return to   at the time when we feel blue or nostalgic.  So don't forget to allow in your budget for some fun  whether that is your holiday, subscription to 
things that you love doing such as for example:   attending Opera shows or Theatre, or some kind 
of hobby maybe like me, you love photography, or coin collection. Or maybe just simply you enjoy 
going out with your family and your friends.  So please include some fun in your budget 
so you don't feel guilty spending money   because you've done your budget and you know 
exactly that you can afford it and you don't have to justify your spendings either. Here there are 15 ways to improve your retirement planning   or financial planning at any stage of your life. If you enjoyed this video please LIKE IT,   If you found it informative please SHARE IT with your 
family, with your friends, I'm sure that they could benefit from this
information just as much as you do.

And please don't forget to SUBSCRIBE to this channel as well. Next week we will continue discussing further 16 ways
to improve your financial planning journey   I wonder if you can come up with few suggestions yourself.  Please let me know in the description below this video
what would you think are important ways   to improve your retirement planning? 
Please share your ideas with us.   And now I want to invite you to watch some of 
today's mentioned videos: the first one, “How much do I need to retire” very important information if you are planning your retirement soon. The second is the series of retirement income 
videos: Age Pension & Your Retirement So feel free to jump onto those recommended videos and I will be speaking with you soon. See you then.

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Factors That Can Reduce Retirement Income

There are many different factors that can reduce retirement income. The first may be fairly obvious, but it’s the effect of death. For two spouses when there’s a pension involved, the death of a spouse could mean the loss of a pension income. Now if there’s a survivor benefit, that income may continue, so it’s important to evaluate your options when making pension decisions. A lot of people use insurance to protect against this type of income loss. Another way death can reduce retirement income has to do with Social Security. When two spouses are receiving Social Security and one spouse passes there will be a loss of one of the benefits. Now, the surviving spouse will receive the higher of the two benefits, but there still will be some loss of income. The final way that death can reduce retirement income has to do with taxes. Moving from married filing jointly to now filing single can push the survivor into a higher income tax brackets. The reason for this is that the income thresholds for married filers is about twice what it is for single filers. This can have a major impact on the surviving spouse’s net after tax income in retirement.

Taxes in general is another area that a lot of people overlook when it comes to retirement income. The reality is that taxes will take much more from you than the market ever can. For instance, going back to 2008 during the Great Recession, the average portfolio might have declined 20 to 30 percent, assuming it was well diversified, of course. That might have taken a couple of years to recover, but taxes in retirement can easily cost anywhere from 30 to 40 percent. And that’s money that will never come back. So it’s really important to consider where your different sources of income are coming from in retirement. Would it all come from pensions, Social Security, IRAs, 401(k)s, sources that will be taxed at ordinary income rates? Or do you have good tax diversification where you can choose from pulling money from maybe a Roth IRA raise or non-qualified accounts and really get a lot of control over your taxes in retirement? And finally, inflation. Inflation is absolutely something that can reduce your income in retirement. And it does this by reducing the purchasing power of your dollar in retirement.

Inflation isn’t just something that happened in the past – things will continue to cost more in the future. So let’s look back 30 years. 30 years is about the average timeframe for most people in retirement. So in 1989, the average cost of a first class postage stamp was twenty five cents. Today that same stamp will cost you fifty five cents. Also in 1989 the average cost of a new car was $15,000. Today the price of a new car will set you back on average $37,000. So you need to look at how well your different sources of income will keep up with inflation during retirement. For help optimizing your retirement income, visit us at PureFinancial.com. .

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Retirement Planning for Singles

Retired life is a huge bargain for any person, which'' s especially real for single people who may be retiring with simply one revenue as well as who may have developed a savings entirely off their own financial savings. So, we understand that solitary people can and also do retire pleasantly. One quarter of individuals over age 60 are living alone in their house, and that number is somewhat greater for ladies, as well as that'' s, of program, due to females ' s long life. What we'' re going to speak regarding here is retired life for solitary people. We'' ll go over some standards to give you a rough idea of what the landscape looks like for single people, after that we'' ll get right into exactly how much cash you could need as you go right into retirement, after that we'' ll talk concerning some pointers that can assist enhance the opportunities of retiring pleasantly. Allow'' s start with the typical retired life income for single people. So it'' s$42,000 usually for an individual in retirement, and that originates from the United States Demographics Bureau. The mean is a little bit lower at $27,000. A pleasant tip of exactly how this works: The average is the center, so if you line up all of the study results, people telling you what their revenue is, for example, that arrowhead factors at the middle observation, which would give us the average down at the bottom.But if we go to the

average, that is going to obtain altered by, in this situation, rich individuals, for example, they have a really high income. When it pertains to Social Protection, the average has to do with $1,500 a month or $18,000 per year.Your level depends, obviously on your revenues, if you had higher profits throughout your working years, after that you have a tendency to potentially have a larger advantage than that, as well as maybe reduced, and after that certainly, your declaring age is likewise a crucial thing. If you claim early at age 62, you get a lowered benefit. That'' s likely to reduce the amount you get. Next off, we have pensions, some people obtain an earnings from a work they operated at. That could be in the public industry as an educator, a firefighter, that kind of thing, and even in the exclusive industry, you might have a pension plan from your task, and those revenues just are all over the board, it might be high, it can be reduced, however these are different incomes that individuals may have in retirement.This is simply a pleasant

pointer that this is simply one video clip and also it might cover some intriguing information, but it ' s not specific to you so I hope you ' ll do a whole lot much more research, with any luck contact some professionals and get some customized suggestions, which method you can improve the opportunities of things working out for you. Now allow ' s chat concerning just how much you may need as you go into retired life. Regrettably, there ' s no solitary solution on what you need since it depends'. So the very first step is to find out what kind of revenue you ' re going to need, as well as I ' ve obtained various other videos on that, I ' ll put links in the description to get you some even more information, yet you can look at changing a section of your income, or you can just claim, I desire X amount of bucks per year, or you can select various other methods, yet first we need to recognize exactly how much earnings you are hoping for.Next, we tally up your income sources, to make sure that may be some surefire revenue that can be found in from

Social Safety and security, as an example, or from your pension at your office, however that develops a base of earnings which could or might not cover what you require. However it provides us a base and afterwards if we require to load that in, we can supplement withdrawals from your retired life savings, so that could be out of your IRA, your 401, 403, these accounts that you have developed up in time can supply supplementary income to assist fill up the gap between that guaranteed income you get and the quantity you actually wish to spend. There are a variety of methods to find out just how much to take out and also to establish different methods, there could be throwing strategies, there may be withdrawal strategies like the 4 %rule. Or if you don ' t like that, make it the 3 %rule to be safer, or secure even more if you think that ' s insufficient as well as you ' re marketing yourself short.Ultimately, there are a variety of ways to approach this, so you simply'pick one that functions well for you, and once again, I can aim you to some sources on figuring that out. As well as ultimately, you will certainly wish to look at taxes and also rising cost of living, so during your retired life years, it ' s sensible to assume that prices might raise on many of the points you acquire, so we desire your earnings to be able to raise also, Social Security generally does increase, but maybe not at the very same price as things you ' re buying, so your withdrawals might need to make up that.Plus we ' ve obtained tax obligations. You usually will owe taxes if you ' re taking circulations'or you ' re taking withdrawals from pre tax pension. If you have a pension that could be taxed also. We just wish to look at all of these things and'determine what your utmost cash left over to spend monthly is going to be. For an over streamlined instance, allow ' s just consider Jane Doe. She ' s 60 years old, she ' s solitary, she wishes to retire in about five years, she makes about 80,000 a year as well as has 700,000. A lot of people retire with less than that, a lot of individuals retire with even more. I ' m mosting likely to bring up my economic preparation software program that I use with customers, as well as we ' ll simply review type of why there ' s no solitary answer on just how much you require. Currently, if you can inform me precisely just how long you ' ll live as well as what the markets will do and what rising cost of living will look like, we can inform you specifically what you ' ll need. Yet there are a great deal of unknowns, so a great deal of times we begin with a possibility of success and also I ' ll discuss what that indicates, as well as then we look at little tweaks and how different modifications might impact that probability of success, so working an additional year could bring her from … Let ' s claim 75%to 84%most likely to prosper. Currently, success as well as failure are rather made complex. They wear ' t necessarily suggest that you go completely damaged, however you may need to make some modifications, so let ' s speak concerning what does the success imply? We, once again, can not predict the future, so we claim', Allow ' s recall and also say, You get dealt 1,000 hands. You ' re playing a video game of cards and you get 1,000 hands. Several of those are good and also several of those misbehave, so the excellent ones often tend to be up below, near the top. And also you in fact wind up with a great deal of money left over. A few of them are not as great and also you finish up lacking money early. The mean is, once more, that that ' s right in the center when we line them up in order for best to worst. And so you may state, you ' re probably not going to obtain the very best, you ' re probably not going to get the most awful, although anything is possible.So that ' s exactly how we select this probability of success.'Currently, possibly she doesn ' t wish to work an extra year, so we can look at various methods of completing points here. Incidentally, we '

ve integrated in some lengthy term care in situation she does get ill and needs that at the end of life. She ' s wanting to invest concerning 4,000 a month, that ' s after some health treatment prices that are going to pump up annually, as well as she ' s saving a respectable amount in some 401K and also taxed accounts. Let'' s say she proceeds and also maxes out that Roth, is it mosting likely to make a big distinction? Not really, ' reason she'only has five years left. What we do below is we begin looking at all of these various variables and also playing with the items and also figuring out what does it take to make her effective 'at her retired life, or at the very least effective sufficient that she ' s comfy making that transition.So below are some tips to enhance your chances. The first is to plan for long-term treatment. If you ' re living by yourself, you put on ' t have someone in your home who can help you do things, and it ' s feasible if even a couple can

managing this on their very own … I indicate, if you consider a couple, is just one of individuals physically able to move the other individual around and also do they have the abilities to supply wellness care, and also the moment as well as the energy, honestly, to offer all that type of treatment? It ' s important for everybody, yet it ' s particularly essential for solitary people to plan for this treatment. You can look at obtaining insurance policy, you can look at budgeting for some prices, like we showed you in the software program, you might want to budget plan for a much bigger number if you go into memory care or something like that with 24 hour supervision, it can get really expensive rapidly. As well as you can discover different living plans, perhaps doing things with good friends or particular neighborhoods that may be an excellent fit for you.Next is to prevent leaving cash on the table so if you were formerly wed as well as your partner died or you ' ve been separated, you may be eligible for benefits. That ' s perhaps from Social Protection, you can potentially obtain a survivor ' s advantage, or if you were married for at least ten years as well as you '

ve been separated, you can potentially get spousal advantages on your ex-spouse partner ' s function document. It ' s just essential to check out every one of these to see if there are any kind of sources available for you. Next is to make a strategy, and I am of training course prejudiced as an economic planner, however I think it is really practical to go through the procedure, and the major goal isn ' t to obtain a large file that tells you what your economic strategy is. Rather, actually, the advantage is undergoing that procedure and also discovering a great deal about your financial resources as you do it, as well as in that process, you get an idea of what the threats are, just how you ' re doing, you could get self-confidence and also clearness on whether you can go on and retire, if you need to do specific things or not.It ' s just an extremely useful procedure for a great deal of people, however I ' ll leave that for you to make a decision. If you located this video clip useful, please leave a quick thumbs up. That offers me comments that this is something you'might delight in more of, so many thanks for watching and also take care.

One quarter of people over age 60 are living alone in their home, and that number is a little greater for ladies, and that'' s, of program, due to women ' s longevity. You will desire to look at taxes and inflation, so throughout your retirement years, it ' s affordable to think that rates may enhance on several of the things you acquire, so we desire your revenue to be able to enhance as well, Social Security normally does rise, however perhaps not at the exact same price as the points you ' re buying, so your withdrawals may require to account for that.Plus we ' ve obtained tax obligations. I ' m going to bring up my financial planning software application that I utilize with customers, and also we ' ll simply go over kind of why there ' s no single solution on how much you need. She ' s looking to invest concerning 4,000 a month, that ' s after some health and wellness treatment costs that are going to pump up each year, and she ' s conserving a suitable amount in some 401K and also taxed accounts. Instead, actually, the benefit is going via that process as well as finding out a great deal regarding your financial resources as you do it, as well as in that process, you get an idea of what the risks are, just how you ' re doing, you could obtain self-confidence and also clarity on whether or not you can go in advance and also retire, if you must do specific points or not.It ' s simply a really useful procedure for a whole lot of people, yet I ' ll leave that for you to decide.

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