Preparing the Ideal Retirement Part 1

When preparing for your ideal retirement, ask yourself the questions when are you going to retire? when does your spouse want to retire?

Preparing yourself emotionally and psychologically for retirement. You have to ask yourself the following:

• When are you going to retire?

• When does your spouse want to retire?

• Where are you going to retire?

• What are you going to do when you retire?

Now, all of these have a financial component to them, and without enough assets set aside, you may not have choices here.

When Will You Retire?

Oftentimes, the later years in our careers are when we are making the greatest contributions to work, and we're at our peak earning levels.

When you are going to retire depends on how much you have set aside. For some potential retirees, however, working is preferable to retiring. There are many 65-year-olds happily employed, collecting their Social Security benefits and a paycheck each month. I recently interviewed a 75-year-old women about her plans for retirement, and she gave me a one-word answer, "Death!" She tried retirement and found it boring. Her kids wanted her to baby-sit, her husband wanted her to cook, and her mother, who is still alive, wanted her to come and visit every day. She still does all of those things but only on the weekends now.

If you decide to retire early, there are many things you need to plan for. Will you be able to tap into your retirement plans for income? Do you have enough in assets if you can't? Medicare doesn't start until you reach age 65, so you'll need health insurance.

When does your spouse want to retire? Retirement is a personal option, and certainly, if you are coupled, you make joint decisions, but if you don't want to retire with him, don't. There could more problems with your retiring and being unhappy about it. Oftentimes, the later years in our careers are when we are making the greatest contributions to work, and we're at our peak earning levels. If you will get a pension from work, the pension formula often builds on the last years of your career.

He can learn to do the grocery shopping and to cook. It will give him plenty of time to play golf and do the guy things he's talked about doing for so long. A word of advice: If he does take over the housework, to not---I repeat, do not---criticize his vacuuming or his cooking. If you do, it becomes your job again. If dinner is always meat and potatoes, have a salad for lunch and fruit for breakfast to cover the basic food groups.