Developing Budgetary Basics Can Build A Firm Foundation for the Future

Creating a financial profile requires an “honest” assessment on your attitude towards money.

In addition, a life-expectancy test can establish a timeline for basic assumptions for retirement planning or cost projections on long-term care and medical expenses. You’ll need to create a budget to establish a spending threshold during retirement. But a budget can also be a road map for milestone events that occur in most of our lives, such as children getting married, having children, funding college education for grandkids or helping to buy a home for retirement. Timeline planning around life events can trigger conversations between an investor and an advisor on financial goals. Once financial goals are established, you and your advisor can create planning strategies and tactics to prepare you for each life event. Then you can discuss financial products based on your risk tolerance to achieve your goals.

It’s important to know the fee structure of your advisor, the expenses of the financial products you buy and the retirement administration costs of your plan. You don’t want to wait until retirement to discover all the costs of your retirement plan and the investments you purchased. You also may need to adjust your predispositions toward money by shedding money myths and create an open environment of trust with your advisors. You need to approach our money decisions with eyes wide open and demand full disclosure. We all have a history with money that has formed our opinions as consumers and investors. And speaking of history…there’s an estimated 1 trillion dollars in unclaimed qualified retirement money abandoned by plan participants with former employers. It’s worth your time to reconstruct your work history to make sure you’ve accounted for all your money.

For more information on how you can establish a budget, your risk tolerance, life expectancy and work history, just write to steve@onthemoneynews.com https://youtu.be/5K1Ql9Kc1Qg