Retirement For Folks Age 50 and Beyond

For those that are 50 years and older, when they look at their retirement savings what should they be concerned about?

They should really start with having an honest assessment of where they are and also take a look at what your expenses are going to be when you get to retirement.

Research done by the fidelity Institute showed that if you’re above the age of 55, only 55% of your income is going to be replaced by pension, Social Security, and savings so there’s a 45% gap. So when you set those retirement goals, be realistic with those expenses also – if you’re coming in close on getting those expenses paid for make sure that you take into account that those expenses will probably go up a next four to five years just from inflation, if you are close now it’s going to get really tight as the years go by and life expectancy also continues to go up for us.

For the people that are 50 can you contribute more to your retirement plan?

Yes the IRS will allow an individual at the age of 50 or above to actually do $18,000 a year to a 401k plan but for those older you can do what’s called a catch-up contribution so you can throw in an additional $6,000 into your 401k plan and can do that for as long as you’re working.

That’s another $24,000 someone can save for retirement so if the cash flow is there, my advice is to continue to hammer away at that and let that money grow over the course of time

Do you find a lot of people that retire have debts other than a mortgage?

Credit card debt is another big one, really at that point you want if you’re spending a thousand or two thousand dollars a month as some people do just for the points for their cards that’s fine as long as you pay it off but don’t think that you know

Takeaways! would be pay

• Pay off the debt

• Max out the 401k contributions