Financial Planning in Your 60s

Financial planning is a lifelong process. In your 60s, with the retirement finish line likely in sight, returning to or creating your financial plan is as important as ever. Retirement is a weighty milestone, and not one that you can afford to get wrong as you hit your 60s. Here are five tips to help ensure that your golden years match your dreams for them:

1. Update your financial plan. Revisiting your plan before retiring will give you confidence that you will have adequate resources to live the lifestyle you want in retirement or provide a wake-up call to make changes. Our financial planners have the ability to run multiple scenarios in order to gauge your retirement success.
2. Consolidate where you can. If you had multiple employers throughout your career, you may have some old 401(k) or retirement plans that you might want to consolidate. Take this opportunity to clean up your balance sheet—it’s easier to keep an eye on your accounts if they are under one roof. Plus, it will make taking required minimum distributions simpler when that time arrives.
3. Prepare for Medicare. A good date to keep in your head or on your calendar is three months before your 65th birthday, when you are eligible to enroll in Medicare. Do it in a timely manner to avoid the stiff penalties that come with late enrollment. The exception: If you plan on working beyond age 65 and you are still covered by your employer’s plan. In that case, enroll in Medicare a few months before you leave your job to prevent any coverage gaps.
4. Plan for Social Security. We’ve written extensively about Social Security and have three podcast episodes dedicated to the topic—for good reason. Social Security can be just as complicated as Medicare, if not more so. Above all, it’s vital for you to understand how much you’ll receive as well as the implications of filing for your benefits sooner or later. You can get started at ssa.gov or give us a ring.
5. Review your estate plan: Your estate is your legacy, and it shouldn’t be taken lightly. Make sure that you have the basic estate-planning documents up to date (wills, powers of attorney, and health care documents). Are the beneficiaries on your retirement accounts up-to-date? Have you considered any charitable impact that you would like to make?

Financial planning doesn’t stop when you stop working. It’s an ongoing process that should be reexamined whenever your life changes. Our recommendation to all our clients: Get started or review your financial plan in early 2020. Simply contact your portfolio team to get started.

About Adviser Investments

Adviser is a full-service wealth management firm, offering investment management, financial and tax planning, managed individual bond portfolios, and 401(k) advisory services. We’ve been helping individuals, trustsA legal document that functions as an instruction manual to how you want your money managed and spent in your later years as well as how your assets should be distributed after your death. Assets placed in a trust are generally safe from creditors and can be sold by the trustee in short order, avoiding the lengthy and costly probate process., institutions and foundations since 1994. Adviser Investments and its subsidiaries have over 5,000 clients across the country and over $8 billion in assets under management. Our portfolios encompass actively managed funds, ETFsA type of security which allows investors to indirectly invest in an underlying basket of financial instruments (these may include stocks, bonds, commodities or other types of instruments). Shares in an ETF are publicly traded on an exchange, and the price of an ETF’s shares will fluctuate throughout the trading day (traditional mutual funds trade only once a day). For example, one popular ETF tracks the companies in the S&P 500, so buying a share of the ETF gets an investor exposure to all 500 companies in the index., socially responsible investments and tactical asset allocation strategies, and we’re experts on Fidelity and Vanguard mutual funds. We take pride in being The Adviser You Can Talk To. To see a full list of our awards and recognitions, click here, and for more information, please visit www.adviserinvestments.com or call 800-492-6868.