Are You Retirement Ready?
Retirement planning is a huge undertaking, and it can be hard to know whether you’re ready. When considering if you are on the right track there are a few things you should look at:
- Do you have any debt? Carrying debt into retirement can cause undue stress on your assets and retirement income. Student loans, credit card debt, car loans or even a mortgage payment can all contribute to this stress. You’ll want to make a concerted effort to pay down all of your debt so you can enter retirement debt free.
- Where can you reduce your expenses? If you calculate your working income and your retirement income, you may see that you need to reduce some of your expenses in order to stay within your retirement budget. Finding opportunities to reduce your expenses will allow you a more comfortable retirement in the long run.
- How will the potential primary retirement roadblocks affect you? There are four potential roadblocks on the way to retirement: Housing, Assisting Adult Children, Children’s Education and Healthcare. By considering how these roadblocks have affected or will affect your ability to retire is crucial in making sure you have a solid retirement plan for the future.
Luckily, Your Money Line can help. Their online platform provides learning resources to help you understand where you are, where you need to go and how to do it well. You can also call or email their Financial Guides to ask more specific questions like: As I start drawing retirements, what are some of the tax situations I need to consider and talk about with my tax advisor?
If you are new to Your Money Line, visit Pension Fund’s Your Money Line page to get started. If you already have a Your Money Line account, simply log in to view the following tools on your dashboard which can help you determine your retirement readiness.
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Power Percentage™ tool:
Our Power Percentage™ tool measures what you’re doing to improve your financial life and how close you are to creating financial independence. You can use it to see if you’re on track for retirement since it tracks many factors in your financial life, such as saving and debt reduction, and encourages good financial behavior. If you consistently increase your Power Percentage™ each year before retirement, you’ll set yourself up for long-term success. Power Percentage™ helps you understand how well you are doing financially now and allows you to practice habits that will make retirement easier.
Stability Academy:
Our Stability Academy is designed to improve financial stability in a measurable and meaningful way. We’ve created a proprietary Stability Index Score system to help you understand your relationship with stability. Based on that score, you are added to one of three distinct study groups: Navigators, Wayfinders, or Voyagers. This is our long-term coaching program that gives you step-by-step guidance to a happy, financial life and ensures retirement readiness.
Mock Retirement Course:
We also have a Mock Retirement course that helps you practice for retirement. The best way to see if your retirement plan will work is to test it out by taking our course. It will help you determine what money you will have for retirement and if it’s possible to live on it right now. There are also other retirement articles to help guide you through retirement planning and ensure you will get where you want to go.
Our Financial Guides are also available when you need them for more personalized guidance.
Gifts by generous donors to Ministerial Relief and Assistance (MRA) make programs like Your Money Line possible. Learn more about MRA here.