Retirement Planning Advice: Tips on Retirement Planning for Any Age

Looking for retirement planning advice? You’ve come to the right place. In the coming paragraphs, we’re going to share the best tips for retirement planning. Many of our retirement planning tips will apply to young people just getting started and those who are rapidly approaching their retirement date. So no matter your current situation, you will benefit from exploring the advice on retirement planning below.

And while all of our advice on retirement planning is pertinent, the final tip we’ll offer will change the way you look at investing. With this one tidbit, you can effortlessly pick the right stocks for your retirement portfolio – whether you’re focused on safe, steady dividend payments or you want to supplement your income through swing trading or day trading. You’re not going to want to miss this one!

The Best Retirement Planning Advice Online: Tips on Retirement Planning for Any Age Group

When it comes to retirement planning, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t advice that can help everyone – regardless of your retirement goals or the current state of your finances. So whether you’re just starting to think about retirement or you’re already in retirement, our tips on retirement planning will set you on the right path.

Start Early to Leverage the Compounding Effects of Time

One of the best pieces of advice for retirement planning is to start early. The earlier you start saving and investing for retirement, the more time your money has to grow. And as we all know, compound interest is a powerful thing. What exactly is the advantage of investing early for retirement, you ask? Well, we wrote a complete guide on the topic if you’d like to explore it further. It comes down to the compounding effects of time.

If you start saving for retirement in your 20s, your capital has far more time to generate compounding interest. That compounding interest will continue compounding upon itself. After 30-40 years of making modest monthly deposits into a retirement savings account generating compounding interest, you are leaps and bounds ahead of someone who only has 10-20 years on their side. You can pay far less over the course of your life to get to your dream retirement because much of your retirement fund is built on compound interest.

Meanwhile, someone who doesn’t start saving for retirement until they’re in their late 30s has to deposit a lot more each month (or in a lump sum) to get to the same total amount in their retirement account. Further complicating matters, expenses and responsibilities start to add up with age – making retirement planning more stressful.

If you’re reading this discussion on retirement planning advice at an early age, you have the advantage of time on your side – don’t squander it!

Diversify Your Retirement Investments Beyond the Basics

Once you start thinking about retirement planning, it’s important to begin diversifying your retirement investments. Many people only think about traditional retirement options like a 401k or an IRA when they start looking for advice on retirement planning. And these are great places to start your retirement savings account. But there are other retirement options available that can provide more stability and security in retirement.

For example, annuities provide a guaranteed income stream in retirement – no matter how long you live or what happens with the stock market. And if you’re worried about outliving your retirement savings, annuities can give you peace of mind knowing that you have a guaranteed income for life.

But, two of the best investments you can make for retirement are in the stock market and real estate. These generate far greater returns. We’ll talk more about stocks, in particular, later on. Just know that there are retirement planning options beyond the basics. And if nothing else, diversifying your retirement portfolio allows you to enjoy peace of mind knowing you haven’t put all your eggs in one basket.

Determine What Your Dream Retirement Looks Like & What it Costs

When you think about retirement planning advice, this is probably one of the first tips you’ve heard: determine what your retirement looks like and how much it will cost. This is easier said than done for many people. And that’s because we often have conflicting ideas about retirement.

On one hand, you may want to retire as soon as possible so that you can finally relax and enjoy your hobbies full-time. But on the other hand, you may feel like you need to keep working to stay sharp and engaged. The key is to find a balance between these two retirement extremes – and that’s different for everyone.

Think about what retirement looks like for you. Do you want to retire to a cabin in the woods? Or travel the world? Maybe you just want to spend more time with your family and friends. And while you may think you have your dream retirement mapped out already, expect your goals and desires to change with age. As a result, we always recommend allocating more cash to your retirement savings goal than you anticipate needing.

If you’re not sure where to start, there are plenty of retirement calculators online that can help give you a ballpark estimate of how much money you’ll need in retirement. From there, you can begin making adjustments to your retirement plan accordingly.

Keep Emotion Away From Retirement Planning by Relying on Tried-and-True Tactics & Principles

One of the most important pieces of retirement planning advice is to keep emotion out of the decision-making process. This can be difficult because retirement planning is often emotional for people. After all, your retirement savings is likely one of the biggest investments you’ve ever made.

It can be easy to become overwhelmed by the thought of saving up millions of dollars to support your dream retirement lifestyle. But it’s important to remember that retirement planning is a marathon – not a sprint. And in order to reach your retirement goals, you need to take a long-term view of your investment portfolio. This means not letting emotions like fear or greed dictate your retirement strategy.

For example, let’s say you’re close to retirement and the stock market takes a nosedive. It would be natural to want to sell all of your stocks and move into cash so that you don’t lose any more money. But if you do this, you’re likely to miss out on the rebound that typically follows a market crash. And this could have a major impact on your retirement savings. In this particular case, having tools in your arsenal to help you navigate changes to your investments helps. One such tool is VectorVest.

In the example above, you could keep emotion out of your decision-making process by evaluating what VectorVest has to say about the current market climate. You can be ahead of these types of downturns through our intuitive market and stock timing indicators. In anticipation of a major downturn, you could convert to cash to save the profits you’ve built up. Then, as the market starts to rebound, the software can tell you the perfect time to get back into your stocks/funds.

This sort of leads into the next tip for retirement planning we want to share – adjusting your investments over time.

Adjust Your Investments Over Time

As we mentioned earlier, one of the best pieces of advice on retirement planning is to start early and take advantage of the compounding effects of time. But another important retirement planning tip is to adjust your investments over time.

This is because as you get closer to retirement, you’ll want to start shifting your investment mix so that it’s more conservative. This may mean moving cash into more conservative dividend stocks, or even index funds. Or, maybe it means buying bonds. Or, perhaps you pull out enough capital to purchase a few income-producing rental properties.

Whatever the case, it’s important to be sure that your retirement money is allocated in the most efficient way possible throughout your life. This is something we discussed in-depth in our article on retirement investment strategies – the allocation of capital looks different in your 20s, in your 30s, in your 40s, and beyond.

Pay off Debt Before You Retire

One final piece of retirement planning advice we want to share is to pay off debt before you retire. This includes things like credit card debt, student loans, and any other outstanding debts you may have.

The reason this is such important retirement planning advice is that you don’t want to be burdened with debt in retirement. The fewer monthly expenses you have, the better. Not only will this eliminate unnecessary stress, but it will give you a better gauge of exactly how much cash you have on hand to support your retirement. So, if you have any outstanding debts, be sure to create a plan to pay them off as quickly as possible.

One Parting Tip for Retirement Planning…

We hope the tips on retirement planning that we provided above help you navigate this seemingly complex component of your life. The good news is you don’t have to do it alone. With a VectorVest subscription, you can gain clear recommendations on where you should allocate your capital for retirement. Our software for stock market analysis is the best way to find stocks for swing trading OR for long term investing. It’s a versatile tool that will prove invaluable along your journey to retirement.

Even with no experience trading stocks, you can effortlessly analyze opportunities and time your entries and exits to perfection. That’s because it simplifies traditional stock analysis into three simple ratings: relative value (RV), relative safety (RS), and relative timing (RT). Just pick the stocks that are rated the highest and you’ll win more trades! If that’s not easy enough, the software provides you with an actual buy, sell, or hold recommendation for any stock, index fund, or publically traded asset. These are updated to reflect current market conditions, so you can keep your money invested in the right assets throughout the course of your life.

But, the software doesn’t just help you analyze and validate opportunities. It brings them right to you, so you don’t have to do any of stock screening or research on your own. How great would it be to have a stock advisory telling you exactly what to buy? That’s what a VectorVest subscription does. We have pre-built searches for the best retirement stocks, the top dividend stocks, and many others. No matter your goals, we have searches that will align and help you enjoy a high rate of trading success with profitable trading.

It sounds too good to be true, but it’s not – you can see the software in action yourself with a free stock analysis here. If you leave here with just one of the tips for retirement planning we provided, let it be this one.

Wrapping up Our Advice on Retirement Planning

That concludes our advice on retirement planning. We hope the tips for retirement planning that we’ve shared today instill a sense of confidence that you can do this yourself – you don’t need a financial advisor to guide you through the process!

With just a monthly subscription to VectorVest, you can enjoy peace of mind knowing your money is allocated to the best possible assets – even while you’re sleeping. Get signed up today and see the difference yourself – you’ll never look at investing the same again!