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According to a recent study by Fidelity, a 65-year-old couple retiring today will need $300,000 to cover their medical expenses. Unfortunately, that eye-watering number only includes insurance premiums, deductibles, and copays. If you or your spouse need long-term care, which isn't covered by Medicare, your health care costs could end up putting a serious crack in your nest egg.
Successful retirement doesn't just happen. Getting the most out of your golden years takes lots of hard work, years of careful planning, and preparation for the emotional, physical, and financial changes you're going to go through once you stop working.
After slogging through a year of lockdowns, bitter politics, and economic hardships in 2020, 2021 hasn't quite proved to be the big bounce back to normal we were all hoping for. We're still fighting many of last year's fights, COVID-19 is surging again, and we could be entering a contentious new political phase both at home and abroad.
The pandemic closed a lot of doors in 2020. But for cybercriminals, business is always open. The more time folks spend socializing, working, shopping, and managing money online, the more sensitive data could be vulnerable to hacks and scams. Click on the wrong link or answer the wrong phone call and you could be at risk for significant financial loss or identity theft issues that can take weeks, months, or years to sort out.
According to a recent study by the Employee Benefit Research Institute’s Retirement Security Research Center, affluent retirees are, on average, more satisfied than retirees with modest assets and folks who are just managing to get by. Now that probably doesn't sound like a very eye-opening conclusion. But what the EBRI found was that it wasn't really money that made affluent retirees feel better about retirement. It was three factors that I believe should be a cornerstone of any retirement plan, no matter how big your nest egg is.
Recently, while answering some listener questions about early retirement, I pointed out that every piece of your financial plan is connected to every other piece. Adjust one lever, and you might trigger some unexpected consequences if you're not working with a professional who can help you anticipate and prepare for further changes.