Check List

When planning how much to save for retirement, think of the following factors.

   1. Your age

      This will tell you how long you have to accumulate your retirement plan before you retire.

   2. Your expected/desired retirement age

      This is used to determine you how long you have to accumulate your retirement plan before you retire. Ideally, you want to be able to retire at the age you want. However, if you have not accumulated enough assets for retirement, you might have to extend your retirement age further.

   3. Your desired income per year during retirement

      This is critical in calculating how much you need to save now. The desired income during retirement is in Today's term. Because of inflation, the future value of what you think you need now will be different. This figure will be adjusted by inflation.

   4. Your Pension

      The more pension you have coming during retirement, the less you need to save for your monthly expenses.

   5. Your Social Security benefits

      Again, the more social security benefits you have coming, the less you need to save.

   6. Other income you will have coming during retirement

      This is any income you will have coming during retirement such as rental income, royalties, etc

   7. Emergency income needed

      You need to budget your emergency income in your retirement plan since if you suddenly need some cash fast, it won't cut into your retirement income.

   8. Other obligations you will still have during retirement which you need to provide for

   9. Amount you have saved in the bank or investment accounts now

      This is your starting point. List all the money you are saving for retirement, whether it is at your local bank checking or savings accounts or an investment account. This is what you are going to be building your retirement assets from. Starting from what you have now, and save regularly until you have all you need to retire on your terms.

  10. Strategy you have in place now to fund your retirement

      This is an important starting point. If you are saving for your retirement now, you probably have some sort of strategy. Example of some strategies are saving as much as you can each month or saving $500 a month every month etc.. However, to ensure that you have enough for retirement, you need more strategic planning. You need to know how much you need and how much to save and by when...