Late Retirement Planning

• Failing to make a plan. Any plan is better than no plan at all, even if it’s somewhat minimal and won’t necessarily get you where you had intended to be. In the end, it’s ultimately about survival, and having no retirement financial plan at all put your fate in the hands of others who may or may not share your same views on “quality of senior life”.
• Chasing the “golden carrot”. Chasing high returns at all costs, taking unnecessary risks, and speculating as opposed to investing – all sure-fire ways to watch your retirement dollars dwindle. Far too often we hear of those who lost their retirement nest egg and had to get back into the work force to survive. When done correctly, the high risk, high reward stock market is one good investment resource, but by no means should one put their retirement nest egg in that basket alone.
• Not foreseeing the unforeseen. Plan ahead for potential risks, such as high medical, insurance, prescription medication, and long term care expenses. Know what your options are with respect to Medicare and otherwise, which will be critically important once employer-based benefits are no longer available.
• Thinking a Will will suffice. Beyond the will, it’s also important to have a durable Power of Attorney to protect you from potential financial hardships of living probate. In addition, a Healthcare Power of Attorney and a Living Will can help you avoid heartache such as that publicly witnessed with the Terri Schiavo case.
• Going it alone. Those who have ten or less years before retirement and have not made any notable strides in securing their and their family’s, financial future should seek the advice of a credentialed investment expert who can create a solid and often custom-tailored financial plan. Optimally, choose a financial advisor with multiple designations who specializes in retirement-based investing and is expert at safely preserving, protecting and proliferating retirement assets.

Learning the Market and Selecting Stocks

If you were going to spend several thousand dollars on a refrigerator or television, you would thoroughly research the market for those goods to find the product which best suited your needs. Investing is no different. Before buying into a company, you should be well-acquainted enough with it to give a short presentation. Knowing the basics of how a company operates, what it sells, how it makes money, how much money it makes, and what kind of growth the company is expected to experience are all crucial questions that any investor should be able to answer.

Developing a better understanding of the stock market is a long, but hopefully rewarding, process. Immediately investing in stocks with real money, however, is equivalent to taking a test without being introduced to the material. Formerly called “paper trading”, beginning investors would normally spend several months tracking their stock picks without having real money on them.

Thanks to technology, you can now find sites that automate (for free) the process of tracking price changes for you on the internet. Simulated investing is a risk-free way of beginning to understand market fluctuations and the forces driving them. Examining these trends will payoff in the future, as an increased understanding of the stock market can only help you on your path to building wealth.

Once you become comfortable picking your own stocks, you can still continue to “paper trade” online, as it offers the opportunity to explore and experiment with other investing styles. Gordon Gekko, the famed villain in Wall Street played by Michael Douglas, said “Information is the most valuable commodity I know of”. Ignoring for a moment that the movie ended with indictments for insider trading, the statement is true: you will not regret being an informed and intelligent investor.

The market is constantly changing, but by learning the ropes of investing you too can pull off a “One Up on Wall Street”.