If you are nearing retirement, you are about to enter a new and exciting chapter in your life. This is the time where your focus is mainly on yourself and enjoying the fruits of your labor. You and your husband or wife can spend most of your time doing the things or activities that you love. Gone are the days where you have to wait for the weekend to allow time for such things.
If you love working on your car and restoring it, you can start on that project bright and early on any given day. In the past, you couldn’t wait for the weekend or even lose sleep in the week just to be able to work on your car. Retirement makes it possible for you to focus on that project and get your vehicle back to its former glory, if not better.
This is just one of the many things you might be looking forward to when you are nearing retirement. It normally starts with your hobbies and how much time you will have on your hands for them. There are also instances where you might start to think about your family and how often you can see your grandchildren now that you are a few years away from retirement.
However, there are a few areas in your finances and in your life in general that you have to focus on if you are almost at retirement age. Spending time to look over and plan your retirement well before you reach that age can help you enjoy your retirement. Here are some of them worth looking into
Do you have the money you need for retirement?
If you are nearing retirement, your main priority is to make sure that you have the funds to help sustain you through your golden years. Planning for retirement is something you should start with at the soonest possible time. Some people even get to it from the moment they receive their very first paycheck from work.
If you are just a few years from retirement, be sure to audit how much you really have saved up. This might seem like a straightforward process where you just look up one bank account. However, retirement planning means diversifying sources and this could be more than just one account. You might need to look at various investments as well to make sure that you are on track to retirement.
Are you moving to a new place?
As you are nearing retirement, one of the biggest changes you could be planning for is relocating to a different place. There could be various reasons for this such as moving near family members, trying to be near a place of interest, or moving to a less-expensive part of the country. Whatever the reason could be, this is a decision that takes years of planning and preparation.
For one, you have to make sure that everything goes smoothly in between transferring from one place to another. It is also quite difficult to leave behind a place you have been used to for so many years. There are friends and people you might not see anymore so it is a good idea to let them know you are moving in a few years as well.
Nearing retirement opens up the option of a tiny home
One of the housing options a lot of retirees look into is moving into a tiny house. So much so that it is already being referred to as a movement driven mostly by retired folks or those that simply want to save money. There are a lot of pros and cons of a tiny home but the fact remains that it can help you save a lot of money.
This is most appealing to retired people since they want to be able to stretch their money in retirement. One other factor is that most, if not all of the retired folks are empty nesters. They do not need a huge home all to themselves. For one, it is costly to maintain and more importantly, it is more challenging when it comes to upkeep. This is why it is important that you have an idea of how your living arrangement will be in retirement.
What are your retirement plans?
More than just your housing arrangement, it is critical to have a clear understanding of what you plan to do in retirement. You might have all these notions of spending the day in your front porch sipping tea with your favorite book on hand. It is also possible that you could be planning to spend most of your day in your garden growing various kinds of plants, flowers, and even vegetables.
No one can tell you what to do in retirement because it is your life to live but you need to have something concrete planned. If you try to just wing it and plan as you go along, you might lose a lot of time planning and not living. Start putting together a plan for what you want to do in retirement so you can slowly transition into it even before your retirement age.
What are the hobbies you can earn from?
Finances will be tough when you enter retirement and one way to address this is to create al alternative source of income in retirement. It does not have to be as demanding as your past day jobs where you spend most of your day in an office and you only see your family over dinner on weekdays. If you want to earn extra money in retirement, you can look at your hobbies.
There are income-positive hobbies where you do something you love and you get paid for it. USA Today shares that there are some people good so good at their chosen pastimes that they make money off from it. Take baking or cooking for example. You might have been so used to cooking for family and friends over social gatherings but why not sell your creations in a weekend market? It is also possible that you take on writing jobs that revolve around food. You get to share your talent and you learn a lot more in the process as well.
Can you make incremental lifestyle changes to improve your health?
If you are nearing retirement, one of the areas you need to focus on and work on is your health. The longer you put it off, the more challenging it can be for you especially if you start to get sick along the way. There are some lifestyle diseases according to Medicine Net brought about by the way people live and could result to heart ailments, stroke, obesity, and even diabetes.
The healthier you are as you near your retirement age, the less expensive healthcare will be. You would not need to visit a doctor or even purchase over the counter medicine that often. On top of that, you also get to enjoy retirement better when you are healthier. You get to spend time doing the things you love rather than being sick in bed for most of the day.
Are you situated near areas you need to access on a regular basis?
If you are nearing retirement, one of the many things you need to check when you are settled to stay in one place is your access to facilities you will need in the future. This can include health care facilities such as hospitals and clinics and even the pharmacy. You also need to look at where you will be buying your food and other necessities you need on a regular basis.
There are a lot of areas you need to focus on when you are nearing retirement so it is important that you give yourself enough lead time to prepare. Otherwise, you could end up spreading your efforts out too thin that you barely accomplish a thing.
