5) Ensure Your Plan
Ensure you're doing everything you can now to plan for later.
If you've identified gaps, you could work longer than you might have planned, or work part-time in retirement. You could also try to live on less. But as long as you have some time before you retire, there are several ways you can build more retirement resources now.
- Save more as soon as possible. The longer your money has to grow, the more you may have to spend later. But it's never too late to make a difference.
- Look for additional tax-deferred savings opportunities.* The fastest way to build your resources is to protect any earnings from the drain of annual taxes. So you'll want to maximize the tax-deferred investment vehicles available to you.
Make sure you're contributing as much as possible to any tax-advantaged, employer-sponsored retirement savings plan available to you, as well as your IRA. Then consider deferred annuities, where your payments can keep compounding tax-deferred until you withdraw them.
*Taxable withdrawals are subject to ordinary income tax and, if made prior to age 59 1/2 , may be subject to a 10% federal income tax penalty. Annuities do not provide any additional tax advantage when used to fund a qualified plan. Investors should consider buying an annuity to fund a qualified plan for the annuity's additional features, such as lifetime income payments and death benefit protection.