Are You Confident In A Comfortable Retirement?

Retirement is a stage of life that is something to look forward too. At the same time it can be quite a stressful time if you haven’t prepared properly for your retirement. Planning  your retirement is a big step in creating the best retirement you can imagine. With retirement being such a huge step and stage in life what are your feelings about retirement? Are you confident that you will be able to create the retirement you want?

Between 2009 and 2013 workers confidence in having enough money for a comfortable retirement was a record lows. In 2013 only 13% were very confident but that number increased to 18% in 2014, which is a great sign but there is more to it. While 18% are extremely confident now there are still 24% that are not confident at all (only slightly up from 24% in 2013). What does this mean? Let’s dive into this a bit more.

The Employee Benefit Research Institute which released this survey sheds some more light as to why we are seeing this increase. The increase comes mostly from those with higher household income, but not only those with a higher household income but those with retirement plans as well. Almost half of workers without a retirement account were not at all confident about their retirement. If you compare that to those with a retirement plan only 1 in 10 were not at all confident.

This data says a lot to me about what plays a huge role in our confidence to have a comfortable retirement. It should be obvious that the more money we make at our jobs typically the more confident we are that we can create a comfortable retirement for ourselves. While this is very true there is another great factor to a great retirement and our confidence in being able to have enough money for a comfortable retirement. One key aspect to being confident about having enough money for a comfortable retirement is having a retirement account. More than once in this survey is stated the fact that having a retirement account plays a huge role to having confidence that you can have enough money for a comfortable retirement. To be able to have even more confidence in your retirement contributing to those retirement accounts will only help to instil more confidence.

What Can You Do

Ask yourself the same question I posed earlier. Are you confident that you will have enough money for a comfortable retirement? No matter what your answer to that question is my first bit of advice and question would be do you have a retirement account?

For those of you that already have a retirement account are you contributing to it? Do you know what your invested in? Is your retirement a 401k with your work or an IRA? If it is a 401k are you making sure you are contributing enough to get the max match from your company? If not do whatever you can to do it. It is free money and if you aren’t getting the full match from your company you essentially are missing out on free money. The more you start to be involved in your own retirement the more likely you will be to create that comfortable retirement. There are other things you can do that we will discuss later that will help you get to where you want to be with your retirement.

For those of you that do not have a retirement account yet what are you waiting for? Do you have too many bills and it seems impossible to actually save? Set up a budget and abide by it! In your budget set aside some money that can go to retirement. Most of us will find that we spend a lot of money on things that aren’t needed. Once you have figured out your bills and how to start saving for retirement, set up a retirement account and start contributing. Maybe you don’t have a retirement account because you are leery of investing in the stock market or other conventional way with your retirement account. That is ok because with a self directed IRA or self directed 401k you can invest in things you want with your retirement account. Some of the most invested in assets in a self directed IRA and 401k are real estate, gold, private placements and the list goes on.

Don’t let retirement come unprepared. You have the ability to plan today for that retirement you have always wanted. If more control of your retirement is what you are looking for while also wanting to be able to invest in alternative investments like gold and real estate then we can help. By setting up a self directed IRA or 401k you will be able to take control of your retirement while also investing in what you want.

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