Guaranteed Retirement Income Starts with a Plan

 

What tends to get women in trouble is not having a plan to get ahead financially, which also means not being able to put away anything for retirement.

When it comes to women and retirement, the reality is that most of us will end up in charge of our own finances.

Hence the need for women to pay attention when it comes to retirement financial security. Women tend to outlive men, and a lot of us will retire with smaller accounts and lower Social Security benefits than men due to time spent out of the workforce over our careers.

 

“Half of women age 75+ live alone.”

(U.S. Department of Health and Human Resources, Administration on Aging, “A Profile of Older Americans,” 2005)

 

“Older women are 50% more likely than older men to live in poverty.”

(Bureau of Labor Statistics)

 

As women, we need to create financial security for a time when we’ll need it most: In retirement. It’s a matter of taking care of ourselves by creating financial retirement goals.

Have you ever stopped to think about how much money you could save every month if you really buckled down and got serious about your retirement?

Your response might be “But Patti, I can barely cover my monthly expenses, how can I possibly save money for retirement, too?”

What if instead of eating out twice each week, you decided to save those $25 dollars? That would give you $100 to put into savings each month.

What if you took on the challenge my client once did? She set a goal to contribute $400 a month to her retirement. She started doing small odd jobs on the weekends and put all that money into retirement savings. Now she actually has a part-time job on the weekends just to fund her retirement. Anything’s possible if you put your mind to it.

Once you’ve started saving for retirement on a regular basis, the next step is to decide where to save. This one choice alone has the potential to leverage your money into a guaranteed retirement income stream that you cannot outlive.

The Real Power of Annuities

For example, a tax-deferred annuity with a guaranteed lifetime income rider would enable you to receive retirement income for the rest of your life. Even if you lived to be 120 years old, and even after your account balance has gone to zero. As long as you’re alive, you get a check from the insurance company (most life insurance companies provide annuities). That’s the power of lifetime income annuities.

Now, what if you started several of these annuities over time? And, for the sake of diversification, you started them with different top-rated insurance carriers? You’d have multiple streams of retirement income, wouldn’t you?

You could potentially cover all of your expected living expenses in retirement with this simple strategy by essentially creating your own pension plan using lifetime income annuities.

All it takes is a little planning and a strategy to reach your retirement income goals.

Once you set the intention to create a plan, reaching your retirement goals starts to become a reality.

Little things do add up over time. Especially when it comes to retirement savings.