Retirement plan distributions: How to make your money last
You may have spent decades focused on building a nest egg for retirement. So when it’s finally time to start living your retirement dreams, you may be unprepared for your next challenge: how to make your money last as long as you do. Arriving at a strategy for taking distributions from your retirement savings can be complicated. Here are some tips that can help.
Be sure your portfolio isn’t too aggressive or too conservative. Retirement is generally not an ideal time to take bold chances with your finances. At the same time, a portfolio that is too conservative may not provide the growth you need to have an adequate supply of income throughout your retirement. It’s important to find a middle ground that provides both security and enough income.
Allow for variability in withdrawals. While having a starting point for withdrawals is a good idea, there will certainly be years your spending will fluctuate. Big ticket items that come along only occasionally such as a grandchild’s graduation or an extravagant vacation are going to necessitate some flexibility in your retirement withdrawals.
Adjust distributions when the market fluctuates. If you withdraw a fixed amount of money every year, you may end up draining your retirement accounts more quickly during periods when markets are down. You can help curb this risk by maintaining a well-diversified portfolio or using a static percentage withdrawal.
Estimate your expenses in retirement. It’s not easy to estimate all of the potential costs you may have for housing, health care and other living expenses in retirement. However, it pays to run the numbers based on what you know now and how those costs could change in the future. At [Senior Living Community], we work closely with you on retirement income planning so you can make informed decisions and plan your retirement distributions accordingly. We also have tools that can be used to estimate expenses.
Big picture planning
Navigating your retirement distributions requires reviewing all of your assets and how they can be used to fund your future goals. Sometimes you need to step back and look at the big picture, including where you see yourself five, 10 or 15 years from now. You may discover that moving to a retirement community provides stability, predictability and peace of mind for the future.
Visit www.prescommunities.org to explore senior living communities and what they have to offer as part of your planning.
