10 Expensive Mistakes When Planning for Retirement

Nobody likes to make mistakes, especially when it comes to something as important as planning for retirement. Fortunately, if you’ve made one of the following mistakes, you can start today to remedy the problem and start taking positive steps toward reaching your personal financial goals.

 

1. Not Starting Soon Enough

This is the big one. When you start planning for retirement early, time is on your side. Those who start making plans when they’re young have more options, more opportunities, and more time for the markets to ebb and flow.

Meet with a Wealth Management adviser and make a plan. You don’t know what life will bring and it’s likely you’ll make a few adjustments along the way, but when you start with a goal in mind, you’re more likely to achieve it.

 

2. Using Outdated Assumptions

Let’s say you make a plan fairly early in your career but you use outdated assumptions regarding annual rate of return, inflation and GDP growth. Outdated data on any one of these assumptions could derail your plan. That’s why it’s important to revise your retirement planning on a regular basis to make sure you’re still on track and that your numbers match reality.

 

3. Underestimating Aged Care Costs

Aged care costs are on the rise, and if you fail to incorporate these rising costs in your retirement plan, you could come up short at the time when you really need funds.

 

4. Failing to Diversify

Those who diversify their investment portfolios are in a much better position to ride out macroeconomic storms than those who don’t. From a risk management perspective, it’s often said that a retirement portfolio shouldn’t hold more than 5 to 10 percent of any one stock.

 

5. Forgetting About Taxes

Forgetting to account for taxes can be an expensive mistake when planning for your retirement. An adviser can help you to use a combination of strategies to minimise your taxes, both as you save for retirement and as you retire. With taxation in mind, your retirement plan can be much more effective.

 

 

 

6. Ignoring Salary Sacrifice

Those who sacrifice more than the required amount to their superannuation take advantage of tax benefits and added contributions to their retirement fund each pay period. The long-term effects of this strategy can be huge. If you haven’t discussed salary sacrificing with an adviser, look into it as soon as possible.

 

7. Trying to Time the Market

Markets can fluctuate wildly at times, and it’s tempting to want to play those markets in an effort to get quick high returns. But this is a risky proposition, and even some of the savviest investors advocate for index funds rather than trying to play fortune teller with your hard-earned cash.

 

8. Procrastinating

Some people spend more time planning their next holiday than they do planning their financial future. Procrastinating these decisions, however, is the same as deciding not to create a plan. Instead of working toward an achievable goal, you end up with no plan at all, and this can be an expensive proposition.

 

9. Retiring Too Soon

At the end of a long career, it may be extremely tempting to retire a little earlier than you’d originally planned. However, those last few years of steady income can prove to be extremely important. You’ll probably be at the peak of your earning power, and you may need those last few contributions to your superannuation.

 

10. Neglecting to Access Expert Advice

Even if you’ve been successful with your money in the past, it’s wise to get a professional pair of eyes on your retirement plan. A wealth adviser can look over your assumptions, give you tips about where and how to invest your money, and check your plan for legal and tax implications. You can make sure your aged care estimates are reasonable and manage your risk.

To speak with a wealth adviser about your retirement plan get in touch with us at Altus Financial.

For a detailed look into retirement planning strategies you can use today, download our eGuide below.