4 Plans You Need for Retirement That Go Beyond Investing
By Pat Strubbe

The following is adapted from The Retirement Secret.

Most of us know we need to save money for retirement, but what if I told you that investments alone don’t make a comprehensive retirement plan?

The truth is that an investment plan is only one of five plans that you must have in place to truly have your bases covered. The other four plans include an income plan, a tax plan, a healthcare and insurance plan, and an estate plan.

You might not end up needing all five plans, but by putting them in place well before retirement age, you’ll have one thing that everyone wants: peace of mind.

Income Plan
The first plan you’ll want to have in addition to your investment plan is an income plan.

For all retirees, must-haves of an income plan include consistent and reliable income, income that protects your lifestyle from the effects of inflation, and income that lasts a lifetime (or two!). For married couples, you’ll want to go one step further and ensure you have income that continues if one of you passes away.

If a married couple hasn’t considered all four of these items, then they do not have a comprehensive retirement income plan. Simply put, having a plan for all four of these areas should give anyone a tremendous amount of confidence and peace of mind.

You’ll want to consider how to make the most of your Social Security benefits, what options you might have with your state pension, projections of inflation throughout your retirement, how your income would be affected if one of you passed away, and finally, long-term projections to try to make sure you never run out of money.

Tax Plan
Closely related to the income plan is your tax plan. Comprehensive retirement planning includes a strategy to examine your tax liabilities, with the hope of decreasing your tax bill whenever possible. Unchecked, taxes can drain your retirement income and even leave you with less than you need to live on. For this reason, your goal is to ensure that you are never paying unnecessary taxes. This should give you the peace of mind of knowing that you are being as tax-smart as possible.

As you analyze your nest egg’s tax consequences, you can categorize your money into one of three buckets: taxable accounts, tax-deferred accounts, and tax-free accounts. The first step is to determine what you currently have. The next step is to see what the tax consequences of those accounts are.

Finally, you’ll want to analyze your options to see if changes could help you lower your income taxes either now or in the future. With today’s tax rates, there is a federal tax rate jump from 12 to 22 percent. If by planning you can keep yourself in the 12 percent federal tax bracket, it could mean a huge tax savings to you.

Healthcare and Insurance Plan
The next area is your healthcare and insurance plan. A great retirement game plan includes not only offense but defense as well.

Your healthcare and insurance plan should address the possible answers to some major questions that are still unknown: How can you protect yourself from a major financial drain for medical care? What if you or your partner experience a nursing care need? What could happen to you financially if you or a loved one passes away?

This plan is even more important than most realize. According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, a sixty-five-year-old couple with typical prescription-drug expenses will need $295,000 to enjoy a 75 percent chance of being able to pay all their remaining lifetime medical bills, and $360,000 to have a 90 percent chance.

Plan to make the best use of your available resources to provide an appropriate level of protection for you throughout your retirement. This includes reviewing such things as health insurance, Medicare, long-term care and insurance options, and life insurance.

Estate Plan
Lastly, your comprehensive retirement approach won’t be complete without an estate plan.

The best estate plan will allow you to leave the remainder of your unused wealth to your beneficiaries with minimal taxes, cost, and delays. It will reassure you that when you pass on, those you have designated to inherit something will receive the most possible and in accordance with your wishes. This requires a discussion and review of legal and beneficiary documents.

As a married couple, even more important is a plan in case one of you passes away before the other. In addition to being one of the most difficult times of your life emotionally, it can have enormous effects on you financially. The surviving spouse might experience adjustments to Social Security income, pension income, or annuity income as well as other financial changes and decisions.

A comprehensive plan must be prepared for this, and having a planning team working with you should give you great comfort that you won’t be on your own if this happens.

Putting Your Plans Together
As valuable as all five of these plans are, it is just as important that all of them work together. Your investment plan must support your income plan and your income plan must work with your tax plan. In addition, strong healthcare, insurance, and estate plans can protect the rest of your plans. Like instruments in a symphony, they should all play together to create beautiful music.

If you focus on one plan too much and neglect the others, you risk your overall retirement success. Retirement is too complicated and way too important to just sit around and hope that it all fits together, so create these plans now, as far in advance of retirement as you can. You will have peace of mind leading up to retirement, and most importantly, you’ll have everything you need to live out your post-work days in comfort and satisfaction.

For more advice on investing for retirement, you can find The Retirement Secret on Amazon.

About the Author
For over twenty years, Pat Strubbe has taught retirees and pre-retirees how to preserve their assets and increase their income. After watching his own parents struggle when his grandfather needed help, Pat made it his mission to help others avoid that pain. He has been featured in USA Today, Columbia Business Monthly, Investor’s Business Daily, and other national publications, and is a regular contributor on WIS News. You can listen to Pat host the radio show Save Your Retirement on WVOC (560 AM). Pat lives in Columbia, South Carolina, with his beautiful wife, Janelle. He’s the proud father of four children: Carter, Ava, Gabriella, and Isla.
Securities offered through Kalos Capital, Inc. and Investment Advisory Services offered through Kalos Management, Inc., both located at 11525 Park Woods Circle, Alpharetta, GA 30005, (678) 356-1100. Preservation Specialists, LLC is not an affiliate or subsidiary of Kalos Capital, Inc. or Kalos Management, Inc.




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