The thought of retirement planning may be stressful, especially when it comes to making sure you have sufficient savings or income to have a comfortable retirement. Most clients are considered about when they should start saving and which method is the best for doing so. These are all reasonable concerns, but they should not be discouraging. With the help of your estate planning attorney, you can reach all of your retirement goals. Here are some resources that may help you to find much of the information that you need to achieve your retirement goals.
Kentucky Retirement Systems: Provides valuable resources for members, who are employed as a regular, full-time employee of a participating Kentucky government agency.
Kentucky Teacher’s Retirement System: The Teachers’ Retirement System is a benefit “group retirement” plan that pays a defined amount upon retirement based on length of service and final average salary of the employee.
Retirement Timetable: Helpful for overall long-term planning.
Retirement Calculators
Having reasonable goals for retirement is crucial. The truth is, most people don’t know exactly how much money they will need to retire comfortably, or even how to go about estimating that amount. It’s hard to determine what it will take to support your current lifestyle 20 or 30 years from now. For that reason, clients often either believe they need more money than they actually do, or they underestimate their future financial needs. Either way, if your plan is flawed your goals will either be inadequate or impossible to accomplish. Here are a few retirement calculator tools that may be helpful.
Financial Industry Regulatory Authority: This calculator can help you estimate how much to save each year to accumulate enough money for your projected retirement.
Retirement Estimator: This calculator gives estimates based on your actual Social Security earnings record.
401(k) and IRA Required Minimum Distribution Calculator: This calculator can help you determine your Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) from a traditional 401(k) or IRA.
401(k) ‘Save the Max’ Calculator: This calculator can show you whether you are on track to save the most with your 401(k) by maximizing your contributions each pay period in order to reach the allowed IRS limits.
Consider future increases in health care costs
A very important consideration that must be made in retirement planning is having sufficient resources to cover the cost of health care during retirement. Even if you are healthy now, it is likely that, as you age, your need for health care will increase to some degree. It would be a mistake in retirement planning to overlook the increased need for health care in the future. If you do not account for this in your plan, you could still have issues with financial security during retirement. Here are two calculators that may help you make your estimates:
HealthView Advisor One-Click Health Estimator
Health Savings Account: Establishing a Health Savings Account may be a great option to explore. A Health Savings Account allows you to make tax-deductible contributions each year to pay for current and future health care costs.
General Retirement Resources
The IRS provides various tools for detecting and correcting errors in your retirement plans:
Fix-It Guides: Advice on how to correct errors in 401(k), 403(b), SEP, SIMPLE IRA and SARSEP plans.
Check-Ups: Advice for retirement plan sponsors in understanding the requirements of 401(k), 403(b), SIMPLE IRA, SEP and related retirement plans.
Fixing Common Plan Mistakes: How to spot and correct common problems in your retirement plan.
What you need to know about Social Security Benefits
Most of us are concerned about the certainty or stability of the government’s Social Security system. First, you need to understand a little about how the system works. All while you are employed, you are making contributions to Social Security through the FICA taxes that are automatically withheld from your pay check. FICA stands for Federal Insurance Contributions Act. These contributions go towards paying Social Security benefits for other workers when it is their time to retire. Once it is your time to retire, you will receive benefits from the system, as well, based on your level of contributions.
Social Security Statement: Set up an account so you can see estimates of your future retirement, disability, and survivors benefits and also see the estimated Social Security and Medicare taxes you have paid.
If you have questions regarding retirement planning matters, contact Cochrangersh Law Offices, P.S.C. for a consultation either online or by calling us at (502) 423-7023.
