Planning for Retirement: Building $1 Million Nest Egg from Scratch at 50
If you havenât begun planning for retirement yet and youâre in your 50s, itâs understandable that you may be worried. However, follow the below advice, and you can still save $1 million in time.
Download Free E-Book âThe 20% Rule: How You Can Avoid A Retirement Collapseâ
Get on a Budget Immediately
It is absolutely essential that you create a budget for yourself that will help you reach $1 million by retirement. One of the worst pieces of retirement advice that is often repeated for some reason is that you donât need a budget to reach your retirement goals.
Keep in mind, too, that youâll need a budget once you retire, as well. Statistically, youâre actually likely to increase your spending once you reach retirement, so having a budget in place â even if you end up adjusting it â will go a long way toward protecting your nest egg.
Set Aside 20% of Everything You Make (at least)
As a rule, planning for retirement should entail setting aside 20% of your income. A big reason why is that Social Security is going to take a major hit within the next decade or so. The Social Security Board of Trustees even released a report to this effect. By 2033, they said that taxes would only be sufficient to cover about 75% of SS benefits.
People who ignore this when planning for retirement could be in for a very serious shock when they finally hit 65.
The same report didnât seem very optimistic about Medicare. Unless something is done, many of you may be financing your healthcare â at least partially â during your golden years.
Sadly, even the old standby of pensions doesnât seem long for this world. Their deterioration has actually been occurring for decades now.
As Michael Molinski reported in USA Today:
âFrom 1980 through 2015, the proportion of private wage and salary workers participating in defined benefit pension plans fell from 38% to 15%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. DB plans are the traditional pension plans that your father or grandfatherâs generations were accustomed to, but now theyâre as rare as a gold watch at retirement.â
You simply canât expect that the mechanisms used by generations past to save for retirement are still going to be relevant. This is especially true if youâre just beginning retirement planning at 50 and want to hit $1 million. Saving 20% of your income is the very least you must do.
Donât Spend Your Raises
Between now and when you finally quit work for good, youâd be wise to do everything you can to get as many raises as possible. However, instead of celebrating by buying yourself something nice, this extra money will go right into planning for retirement.
Some of you may think that youâre at a point in your careers where earning raises is unlikely. There may not be any more opportunities for promotion ahead. Any raises you do receive may not account for much, either.
First, a bit later, weâre going to show you investment options you can use to make the most out of every penny, so raises can still be very helpful.
Second, even further down, weâre going to introduce you to the gig economy. Therefore, even if youâre 100% right that there are no more raises coming down the pike, donât worry. You still have options for pulling in extra income.
Change the Habits That Brought You Here
Unless youâve found yourself in your 50s without any retirement savings by some seriously unfortunate event, itâs time to take responsibility for the situation and plan accordingly.
There are some habits youâre going to have to change in order to build a $1 million nest egg by the time you retire.
Some of these may involve guilty pleasures like smoking or drinking regularly. It could mean giving up luxury items like cable and eating out.
Chances are, though, that planning for retirement at this stage is going to require even more drastic changes.
For example, you might have to change your relationship to money. An honest appraisal of how and why you spend the way you do will help a lot in this regard.
Rethinking your habits will help, but you can do even more where planning for retirement is concerned by simply downsizing your life. Think about the things that require the largest portions of your budget and see if you can erase them.
For example, do you and your spouse both need cars? Could you sell one and put that money toward retirement? Doing so would also mean saving on car insurance. The chances are that you wouldnât buy as much gas, either.
If youâre really serious about planning for retirement so you can reach $1 million, consider living in a smaller house. Again, selling your current home would definitely give you a huge infusion of cash. You would also lower a number of other expenses by moving into something smaller.
Downsizing can definitely be a tough decision to make, but many people end up finding it very refreshing and wish they had done it sooner.
One way you may need to change how you look at money is to pay yourself first.
Maurie Backman at Motley Fool describes this habit as:
âMany people fall behind on savings because theyâre just not in the habit of making it a priority. A good way to ensure that your savings donât fall by the wayside is to arrange for a portion of each paycheck to filter into a retirement plan before you get your hands on it. If you make your savings automatic, you wonât miss that extra cash, and youâll eliminate the opportunities youâd otherwise have for spending it.â
If planning for retirement is going to require putting aside 20% of every paycheck, youâll have to adopt this new mindset of paying yourself first. Make your savings just as much a priority as paying your mortgage or buying groceries.
Leverage Tax-Free Saving Opportunities
Getting a late start on planning for retirement means you need to avoid as much overhead as possible. You need to put as much money as you can into your retirement plan; anything else is a distraction from this goal.
This includes taxes. Fortunately, there are plenty of ways you can set money aside without losing a large chunk of it to Uncle Sam. Some popular tax-free saving strategies include using an IRA (especially a Roth IRA). Bonds can also be helpful in this regard, but weâll cover that in more detail later on.
Download Free E-BOOK âRetirement Investment Accounts: Your Guide to 401(K) and IRAâ
Play Catch Up with Your 401(k)
Speaking of investment opportunities to help with planning for retirement, donât forget about your 401(k). Next, weâll cover bonds, which are the best investment vehicles for retirement, but 401(k)s are great, too.
If you havenât been paying into yours, now is the time to start. Even if your employer doesnât match you for every penny, whatever they provide is worth it. Youâre literally receiving free money just for planning for retirement.
âCatch upâ provisions are valuable opportunities available to those who havenât been making the most of their 401(k).
Dan Kadlec at Time explains catch-up provisions like this:
âIf you are over 50, you can contribute an additional $5,500 to these plans, except IRAs where the catch-up limit is $1,000. Starting from scratch and assuming typical returns you can save $500,000 in just 10 years by maxing out your 401(k) including the catch-up benefit.â
That would get you halfway to your goal! So, take every penny you donât absolutely need and put it toward your 401(k).
Planning for retirement must involve investing, especially for those of who started late. We already mentioned that IRAs are a great vehicle to use for reaching your goals.
However, you need to think about what youâll actually invest in with that IRA. While options abound, bonds are the best for retirement.
The main advantages bonds offer for retirement are:
Stability. Bonds are less likely to lose money than stocks are. So, buying some bonds and some stocks can reduce your portfolioâs losses during stock market declines.
Income. Bonds pay interest regularly, so they can help generate a steady, predictable stream of income from your savings.
Security. Next, to cash, U.S. Treasuries are the safest, most liquid investments on the planet. Short-term bonds can be a good place to park an emergency fund or money youâll need relatively soon.
Tax savings. Certain bonds provide tax-free income. These bonds usually pay lower yields than comparable taxable bonds, but may provide higher after-tax income to investors in high tax brackets.â
For best results, leverage bonds into a ladder. A bond ladder is fantastic for planning for retirement because it provides you with a consistent form of income that you can then continuously invest. At any time, you can decide not to invest, of course. If you need the money, you can just keep it. Otherwise, take your earnings and make more from them.
As we already covered, bonds are extremely stable, too, so thereâs very little risk involved in taking this approach.
All you do is invest in bonds with ever-greater maturity dates. This is where the âladderâ reference comes from. As time goes on, one bond will become due after the next, like rungs on a ladder.
Download Free E-Book âBond Investing Fundamentalsâ
If youâre like a lot of people, planning for retirement has entailed investing in stocks. Thatâs not necessarily a terrible strategy when youâre in your 20s and 30s. Stocks are extremely risky, but at least at that age, you have time to adjust your strategy and recover from even large losses.
When you hit your 50s, and your retirement age is in sight, though, this is no longer the case. In your particular situation, investing in stocks is a horrible idea. One bad swing from the market could be enough to completely clean you out, turning a tough situation into an impossible one.
Take a look at your portfolio and consider selling any stocks unless theyâre performing extremely well and show no signs of doing otherwise in the near future. Then, take that money and put it into a bond ladder as we recommended above.
Iâve talked about the gig economy on this site before and, specifically, how it can help with planning for retirement.
Itâs worth bringing up here again because many of you may need the help to retire with $1 million if youâre in your 50s and havenât begun yet.
In case youâre unfamiliar with the term, the gig economy can be defined as when:
ââŚtemporary, flexible jobs are commonplace, and companies tend toward hiring independent contractors and freelancers instead of full-time employees. A gig economy undermines the traditional economy of full-time workers who rarely change positions and instead focus on a lifetime career.â
Everyone can participate in the gig economy. If youâre currently working, you most likely have a skill you could use after hours to help people, too. That could be your way of earning some extra income to put toward retirement.
Even if you donât think you have a particularly marketable skill, itâs not hard to learn one. You could become a freelance writer or take up graphic design. You could even do something far simpler like mow lawns or employ a favorite pastime like gardening.
The point is that, when it comes to planning for retirement, every little bit counts. Unless youâre making good money and can afford to put aside more than 20%, youâre going to have a really tough time hitting $1 million without some extra money coming in.
Just as we recommended with your raises, the extra money from the gigs you work shouldnât be spent on anything other than helping you with planning for retirement.
Planning for retirement is always a lot of work. If youâre in your 50s, itâs going to take even more work to retire comfortably. However, if youâre hoping to build a $1 million nest egg in the next decade or so, you must begin working toward this goal right away.
Now that you know what to do get busy. Start applying the above advice this very moment.
Planning for Retirement: Building $1 Million Nest Egg from Scratch at 50 was originally published on IncomeClub