Retirement Planning QuickStart Guide

Ted D. Snow Cfp® Mba

Description

THE ULTIMATE BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO TAKING CONTROL OF YOUR FINANCES AND PREPARING FOR RETIREMENT

INCLUDES LIFETIME ACCESS TO ONLINE INVESTMENT COURSE RESOURCES AND OTHER ESSENTIAL RETIREMENT PLANNING DIGITAL ASSETS

Planning for retirement is the biggest financial commitment of your life. Are you prepared?



The future is often filled with fear and uncertainty. Fortunately, your retirement doesn’t have to be. Managing your finances, preparing to transition out of the workforce, and ensuring that your money is working as hard as possible to make your golden years sparkle can be overwhelming.



Best-selling author and finance industry veteran Ted D. Snow, CFP®, MBA, knows how to prepare for retirement no matter what stage of planning his clients are in. Retirement Planning QuickStart Guide cuts through the chatter to help orient you on your journey to retirement with financially sound money management strategies, practical tips, and a thorough look at with it takes to prepare for a retirement worth looking forward to



Using the guidance and insight provided in this book, anyone, at any stage of their career, can find the answers they’re looking for to prepare for a comfortable, satisfying, and financially secure retirement. Whether retirement is right around the corner or still decades over the horizon, you deserve a retirement that's a fitting reward to a lifetime of hard work. This book is your essential companion.

Retirement Planning QuickStart Guide Is Perfect For:

• People in their 20’s, 30’s, or 40’s who know they have to start preparing for retirement but aren’t exactly sure how yet.


• People in their 50’s, 60’s, and beyond – yes even people who are past the retirement age will find value in this book!


• Anyone who is concerned that they aren’t adequately prepared for the largest financial commitment of their lives!

Retirement Planning QuickStart Guide Covers:

• Everything you need to know to get a head start on retirement planning from financial planning to the fundamentals of saving for retirement


• Retirement planning investment strategies, tactics, and techniques that set this book apart from other retirement planning books


• Preparing for retirement at any age (no matter how close or far away retirement truly is)


• Exactly how to retire from work and into life

Retirement Planning QuickStart Guide Will Teach You:

• Where and When to Start – How to Understand Your Unique Retirement Needs and Start Preparing Now


• 401(k)s, Traditional IRAs, Roth IRAs, Health Savings Accounts, Mutual Funds, and Other Financial Instruments – Which Ones Are Right for You and How to Use Them to Best Effect


• Accelerating Your Retirement Timeline – What to Do If You Don’t Think You Have Enough Time (or Want to Retire Early!)


• More Than Money – Going Beyond Financial Security for a Happy, Healthy, and Rewarding Life After Retirement


• Fending Off Fraud, Estate Planning, Minimizing Your Tax Burden, Health Planning, Finding a Purpose After Work, and More!

*LIFETIME ACCESS TO FREE SUBJECT MATTER DIGITAL ASSETS*

• Access to comprehensive online investing courses to ensure your financial preparedness for retirement


• A dynamic asset allocation tool to help you put your money to work for you


• Life planning guide, a budgeting calculator, anti-fraud resources and more!

*GIVING BACK*

ClydeBank Media proudly supports One Tree Planted as a reforestation partner.

Introduction

Chapter 1: Key Retirement Accounts

Chapter 2: Investment Strategies

Chapter 3: Insurance

Chapter 4: Understanding Your Retirement Needs

Chapter 5: Accelerating Your Retirement Timeline

Chapter 6: Social Security and Pensions

Chapter 7: Annuities

Chapter 8: Reaping the Rewards

Chapter 9: Fraud

Chapter 10: Managing Your Portfolio

Chapter 11: Retiring From Work and Into Life

Chapter 12: Managing Your Health Plans

Chapter 13: Estate Planning

Appendix I

Appendix II

Appendix III

About the Author

About ClydeBank Media

Glossary

Disclosures

References

Index

Sujets

• Maison
• Finances domestiques
• Retraite
• Business
• Economics
• Retirement
• Personal finance
• Money Management
• Budgeting
• Retirement Planning

Informations

• Publié par: ClydeBank Media LLC
• Date de parution: 15 mars 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781636100067
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction
My Story—My “Why”
How Giving Changed My Practice and My Life
When to Start Retirement Planning
Retirement on Purpose
The Fit Retiree
Manage Your Money, Don’t Let It Manage You
How This Book Is Organized
PART I - DESIGNING YOUR RETIREMENT
| 1 | KEY RETIREMENT ACCOUNTS
Key Retirement Accounts to Start Building Now
401(k) Plans
Individual Retirement Accounts
Health Savings Accounts
On Your Own or with an Advisor?
| 2 | INVESTMENT STRATEGIES
Inflation
Longevity
Stocks and Bonds
Mutual Funds and Indexes
Exchange-Traded Funds
Real Estate Investments
| 3 | INSURANCE
Disability Insurance
Life Insurance
Long-Term Care Insurance
Property and Casualty Insurance
| 4 | UNDERSTANDING YOUR RETIREMENT NEEDS
Calculating Expenses
Building a Retirement Budget
Calculating Your Life Expectancy
Life After Work
| 5 | ACCELERATING YOUR RETIREMENT TIMELINE
The Origins of the FIRE Movement
Who Are the FIRE Proponents?
Downsides of the FIRE Lifestyle
Lessons from the FIRE Movement
PART II - TRANSITIONING TO RETIREMENT
| 6 | SOCIAL SECURITY AND PENSIONS
Social Security—Its History and (Not So Certain) Future
When and How to File for Social Security
Pensions
| 7 | ANNUITIES
Fixed, Indexed, and Variable Annuities
Immediate and Deferred Annuities
Choosing the Right Annuity
| 8 | REAPING THE REWARDS
Making Portfolio Withdrawals
Generating Cash Flow with Real Estate
Is It Too Late to Start My Own Small Business?
| 9 | FRAUD
Cybersecurity
Other Forms of Fraud
| 10 | MANAGING YOUR PORTFOLIO
Asset Allocation
Tax Planning
PART III - LIFE AFTER RETIREMENT
| 11 | RETIRING FROM WORK AND INTO LIFE
Purpose, Passions, and Plans
Choosing a New Career
Learning
Travel
Location Independence
| 12 | MANAGING YOUR HEALTH PLANS
Medicare
Medicaid
Health Savings Accounts
Private and Supplemental Care
| 13 | ESTATE PLANNING
Wills
Trusts
Power of Attorney
Handling End-of-Life Care
Conclusion
What Your Financial Plan Should Include
Monitoring and Reviewing Your Plan
A Parting Thought
Appendix I
Appendix II
Appendix III
About the Author
About ClydeBank Media
Glossary
Disclosures
References
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Introduction

As in all successful ventures, the foundation of a good retirement is planning.
– Earl Nightingale American author
Whether you are on the verge of retiring or still years away from it, you may have some ideas about what your retirement might look like. Maybe you dream of spending days on the golf course or teaching your grandkids to fish. Perhaps you’ll tour the world, go back to school, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you’re interested in starting a small business or writing your first novel.
Regardless of what you plan to do, you’ll need financial resources to achieve a secure and sustainable retirement. You’ll also need trustworthy information to help you manage those resources—a commodity that can be hard to come by. It’s not that information is unavailable; there’s plenty of it out there. Search the internet for just about any financial topic you can think of, and you’ll find numerous sites offering facts, opinions, and special deals, all geared toward you. The challenge is in separating the reliable information from that which is not trustworthy. While many people heading into retirement rely on advice from a professional financial advisor, others prefer to handle their finances on their own. Wherever you fall on that spectrum, this book will provide information you can trust and rely upon. I have tried to write in a manner that is clear and accessible, and I trust that the content offered will be useful.
Having been a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ practitioner for many years, I have my own opinions about money management, and you will read those opinions as you go through the book. I assure you, however, that the opinions and advice I offer are the same that I would give to my clients and are always geared toward your best interests. I simply want to help you cut through all the chatter and get to the information you need.
Writing this book was especially important to me, and something I realized I needed to do. It’s been a journey, and I hope you choose to travel it with me. Let me tell you about myself, my story, and the purpose I have found for my life.
My Story—My “Why”
Ever since I was five years old, I’ve been intrigued with how money works. I remember going to the Main Street bank in my small hometown of Magna, Utah, to deposit my one-dollar weekly allowance into an old passbook savings account. The day I read the numbers in the passbook and noticed I had saved thirty-five dollars, I thought to myself, “Wow! That’s a lot of money!”
When I was in sixth grade at Webster Elementary, the school set up a little “city” called Websterville on the third floor of our school building. There was a general store, a café, a clothing store, and other businesses, all operated by students who seemed to fit the role of proprietor. I, of course, was chosen to be the banker, depositing the financial gains of other business-minded youngsters and helping my fellow students make withdrawals for the purchase of Laffy Taffy and Blow Pops at the general store.
When we graduated sixth grade to move on to junior high, we were able to cash in our Websterville dollars for real money. As a sign of my future calling, I broke the record for the highest bank account balance Websterville had ever seen. I was extremely excited to cash in my Websterville fortune and claim my real-money reward! Ripping open the envelope that contained my hard-earned profits, I was dismayed to discover that what amounted to two hundred dollars in Websterville money had shrunk to just twenty dollars. It was my first harsh lesson in currency exchange.
Survivors of the Great Depression, my parents instilled in me a spirit of conservation when it comes to spending and saving. Our family’s needs were met, but certainly not all our wants. And yet, I was content in the secure love of my parents and the ways they provided for us. My life was simple—playing basketball and baseball and riding bikes, never thinking about the money we didn’t have. With college on the horizon, I started a serious path to saving. At sixteen years of age, working summer construction and stocking shelves, I saved 100 percent of the cost of my associate degree at Snow Junior College, and with my additional savings I pursued my dream of majoring in business and minoring in economics at Utah State. I finished my degree and still had $4,000 in my pocket and no school debt.
Landing my first professional position at Fidelity Investments, my starting salary was a whopping $15,000 a year. Through my time at Fidelity I gained valuable experience in investing and money management, while personally applying my newfound knowledge by maximizing my 401(k) investments every year. With a move to Dallas at age twenty-eight, I saw an increase in salary to $30,000, and my 401(k) portfolio finally reached $100,000. I celebrated with Mexican food and margaritas. Life was good.
Then, in April 1994, our family experienced tragedy with the death of my father. All in one day, my mother lost her husband and his $35,000-a-year pension that provided for her. Because of some poor financial advice from a wealthy friend, my dad unwittingly left my mother in poverty. On his pension paperwork there were two choices: a “life only” benefit that pays out while the retiree is alive, and a “joint-and-survivor” payout that would have taken care of my mother following my father’s death. My father’s friend had advised my dad to check the “life only” pension box, leaving my mother without a pension, and social security as her only source of income.
The stark reality of how many people make ill-informed and financially devastating decisions fueled a passion in me to start my own financial planning practice. I was seventeen years old when my father made a bad decision that resulted in such terrible consequences for my mother. I was thirty when he died, and there was nothing I could do to change my mom’s situation. From my Dallas Fidelity call center cubicle, I suddenly realized the importance of advising people face-to-face and earnestly counseling clients on a wide breadth of practical and often critical financial decisions, not just the narrow path of investment options and limited advice that Fidelity allowed.
Still haunted by my father’s mistake and its consequences, and firmly motivated to steer my career in a more meaningful and personal direction, I completed my MBA in personal financial planning at the University of Dallas in 1995, and in 1997 I took a leap of faith away from the comforts of my salaried position at Fidelity to start my own practice. Armed with excellent client servicing skills, investing experience, an MBA, a $20,000 severance, and now close to $250,000 in my portfolio, I started as an advisor with Principal Financial Group, with a commission-only income and zero clients. Yet God had a plan for my life.

I am writing this book for everyone. Regardless of your religion or lack of religion, political views, or family background, I believe the value of a financial education is universal and essential. That said, it would be disingenuous for me to share my personal experience with you if I omitted the profound role my faith has played in my personal approach to money management, as well as the approach I take with clients in my practice. The Bible has a lot to say about money and how it should be handled. It offers lessons