Retirement Planning Mistake 1: No Plan

Visit my website at http://www.dscottlofthouse.com/. This video is the first in a series of 12 videos I will be making to discuss "The Dirty Dozen Retirement Planning Mistakes To Avoid", an article published on financialmentor.com. You can find the article at http://financialmentor.com/free-articles/retirement-planning/saving-for-retirement/the-dirty-dozen-retirement-planning-mistakes-to-avoid. The Dirty Dozen Retirement Planning Mistakes To Avoid There Is More To Retirement Planning Than Just Funding Your 401(k) or IRA. Learn The Retirement Planning Mistakes You Must Avoid To Assure Your Golden Years Aren’t Spent Flipping Burgers. Retirement planning is one of the most important financial goals you will undertake – and the stakes couldn’t be higher. Just a couple of missteps can change your golden years from independence, joy and freedom to poverty, dependence, and penny pinching. One of the keys success is to avoid the obvious retirement planning mistakes. You must get it right the first time because there is no second chance once you hit retirement. While you may think you’re on the right track by funding IRA’s and/or a 401(k) retirement plan, experts caution you against false confidence. According to Hamilton in an interview for PBS television’s Frontline, over 900 people in any given 1000 person retirement plan will retire in poverty or run out of money before death – that is over 90% of participants. It’s a shocking statistic considering that isone of the biggest fears most retirees face. Let’s look at the detailed reasons for this potentially high failure rate and what you can do to avoid becoming part of the statistics… Retirement Planning Mistake 1: No Plan According to the Retirement Confidence Survey from the Employee Benefits Research Institute, 60% of workers have not calculated how much money they need to save for their retirement income needs. Similar studies have shown that when workers do calculate their retirement savings needs and set a goal their actions toward achieving that goal materially improve. Stated simply, you can’t get to where you want to go if you don’t even know where the destination is. You must set the goal and then design a plan to achieve it. Failing to plan is the same thing as planning to fail. The sad truth is most people spend more time planning their vacation than their financial future. You must be different. “Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood. Make big plans, aim high in hope and work.” Daniel H. Burnham If you haven’t already set specific, measurable, financial objectives in writing and implemented a step-by-step plan to achieve them then you are setting yourself up for disappointment. Fortune magazine published a study showing people with written plans end up with an average five times the amount of money at retirement as those with no written plans. Similarly, Harvard Business School published a study on goal setting and found: 83% don’t have clearly defined goals. 14% have goals but they aren’t written down. Only 3% have goals committed in writing. After a 30 year follow up, the conclusion was the 3% with written goals earned an astounding 10 times the amount of the 83% group. Have you calculated your retirement planning goals, and have you committed to regular savings goals in writing? If not, then what is stopping you? Do you have a step-by-step action plan based on proven principles that will lead to financial success? If not now, then when? Time is working against you every day you wait. It’s not enough to just calculate your retirement savings number, fund your 401(k), and put it away on a shelf to gather dust. You must review your asset allocation, investment performance, and total savings on a regular basis and make changes as necessary so that you leave nothing to chance. In summary, there are two groups of people: those who set goals in writing and build plans to achieve them, and those who envy and admire the results achieved by the first group. The number one retirement planning mistake most people make is not setting financial goals and committing to a plan in writing to achieve them. Financial coaching can help you design your retirement plan and provide the accountability and experience necessary to support you in completing its implementation. Best of all, we can do it without any of the conflicts of interest created by selling investment products.

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