Friday, April 1, 2011

Retirement Planning :

What is Retirement Planning?

Retirement is a stage where you have attained the freedom to live the relaxed lifestyle of your choice with a sense of satisfaction at what you have accomplished. It is time to do what you always wanted to but were not able to. But, retirement is accompanied by various concerns like regular income for the household expenses, saving for emergencies and also social security.

The key to the success of retirement planning is to start early in order to gain a high corpus at retirement. At the early stages of career, one has a source of regular income according to which everyone develops a standard of living, which probably increases with the rise in income. Therefore, to maintain the same standard of living, without being dependent on others requires an individual to plan for his retirement. Also, with the increase in medical expenses, one needs enough money to meet the health needs which are accompanied with age.

Comprehensive retirement planning of an individual should aim at more than one objective. Although the aim of every plan is to have a more comfortable life, various stages of life require different planning. It only means that retirement planning has to be an integral part of financial planning of every individual. Most people think about their own retirement planning at the age of 50, when they are almost at the verge of retirement. By this time it may be too late to really harness the benefit of compounding for a stage in life that people know will come, but had erased it from the active memory.

Retirement planning require an individual to maintain an insurance portfolio. There are certain tailor-made plans offering wide options to cover maximum financial needs that may arise during the post retirement years.

When should I start Planning for my Retirement?

The best time to start your retirement planning is Now!

It is never too early to start planning for your retirement. The earlier you start planning, the more accumulated corpus you would have at the time of retirement. By starting early, you would have more time in hand for your wealth to grow. The best time to start saving for your retirement is as soon as you start earning. At this stage, you would have to spare very little to invest in a retirement plan.

However, its never too late to start planning for your retirement. If you are already old and at the verge of retirement, you can still plan for your years to come. You would just have to save a bit more towards your pension plan, in order to gain a large corpus at the time of retirement.


Benefits of Retirement Planning :


Retirement planning is increasingly gaining importance. A few reasons are the increasing longevity of persons, disintegration of joint-family system and increase in health care costs. Below are the benefits of a retirement plan:

* Planning for your retirement early would result in the accumulation of a large corpus. This would serve as a regular income in the post retirement years.

*Retirement planning is beneficial as it takes care of the medical expenses. With increasing medical costs, its essential for you to have enough money in hand to deal with the medical emergencies after retirement.

* A properly planned retirement helps you to maintain a standard of living and fulfill all your basic needs independently after you are retired.
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Source : jumpstart

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