We’ll start with asking the difficult question – can you afford the lifestyle you want during retirement? A lot of baby boomers are wondering. Forbes.com published a great article about this very subject. Baby boomers are in a dilemma. Many feel cheated by the retirement climate of today because they did what they were told to do with their money, but feel like they cannot retire when and how they wanted. Why is this?
A Large Population Sector
Part of the retirement problem for boomers today is a sad case of “how the cookie crumbled”. Between 1946 and 1964 there were 76 million births in the United States making up the ‘baby boomer era’. Today that 76 million (give or take a few) make up about one-fourth of the current population (Population Reference Bureau).
Because baby boomers occupying a giant chunk of the population, how they spend their money, save their money, and when they actually start retiring matters to the rest of us – and to their own retirement plans. The massive influence they have on our economy, based on their sheer population size alone, will shake things up a bit. People have started to call this shift ‘the greatest wealth transfer in the world’. Because their spending makes up most of the consumer base, and their wealth control totals at 67% of the country’s whole; when the boomers start aggressively retiring their qualified plans will reflect this shift, as well as the quality of their retirement.
401(k), Roth IRA, IRA, etc.
U.S. News & World Report published online that because a lot of 401(k)s were lost during the recession, retirees are now making ends meet a multiple amount of ways, including part-time jobs. But besides the disappointing fact that retirees are having to resort to clever income streams during their golden years, what is being said about the promises associated with their qualified plans? Are qualified plans really the way to go when there is already so much evidence about the security of those plans? Not only are baby boomers retiring much later because their retirement savings shrunk, they are also hustling for the more income needed to survive.
The answer is NO
When clients walk through the doors at Paradigm Life, they come to us with 3 major fears about retirement:
- Running out of Money
- Affording Healthcare Costs
- Maintaining Independence
We help eliminate those fears by teaching them to look at retirement in two phases – the accumulation phase, and the distribution phase. To successfully retire, one must ask crucial questions about their lifestyle, but also ask questions about how their current plan will really look once they start withdrawing money and paying taxes. The variables associated with popular plans, like taxes, inflation and market volatility, can be eliminated when you use Life Insurance to retire.
A properly structured Life Insurance policy can give you the guaranteed retirement income you are looking for. When your money is sheltered in a cash value policy, you receive tax benefits, liquidity, and market security. Your Life Insurance Policy can supply with you the steady retirement income you are looking for to achieve the lifestyle you want during your non-working years.
Further Reading:
Infinite Wealth: A different Kind of Retirement
