June 20, 2017

Planning ahead for your retirement is important in conjunction with your estate planning. A study by Fidelity Investments recently identified that up to one-third of people hope to make financial resolutions they can stick to. 

There are six different tips that you can follow to ensure that your retirement goals stay on track. These include:

• Breaking your goal into smaller chunks.
• Learning where you currently stand by assessing how much money is already in your retirement account and how much more you will need to accomplish your estate planning goals. You can use Fidelity’s retirement score calculator to assess your retirement savings needs as they stand now.
• Write down your goal and post it somewhere that you can see it every day. Research shows that this increases your chances of success.
• Share your goal with a person you trust, like a relative, spouse, trusted advisor or close friend.
• Track your progress and make it into a game. Checking your savings on a regular basis can help motivate you to continue with the progress you’ve already made.
• Put your savings on auto pilot by signing up for an automatic withholding out of your paycheck, either through an arrangement with your financial institution or through your 401(k) plan at work.

Employing all of these tips together dramatically increases the chances that you’ll be successful when setting a new retirement goal. Staying on top of your retirement planning will allow you to envision the future more successfully and have less anxiety about the prospect of leaving the workforce.