RETIREMENT PLANS

Retirement Plans

Retirement Plans

Retirement planning involves projecting your needs and goals after you reach an age where you no longer are an active part of the work force. This planning involves your future lifestyle, where you will live, legal matters, financial matters, health, and estate. Chances are, you will live for several years after you leave active employment so you need to be sure you are prepared to support yourself and your spouse "Know thyself." There is a great deal of advice available on the subject of personal finance. Much of it is excellent, treating all the topics covered below (and a great many more) with pithy insights and breath-taking completeness. Much of that advice, however, works only if it fits with one's personality. Some people need gimmicks and rigidity, while others resist almost any effort to impose order on their financial management. Adopting a plan which requires behavior totally out of step with habits of long-standing will probably result in failure. "Opportunity cost--the great principle." The cost of any product or activity is the products and activities that must be foregone in order to purchase the product or engage in the activity. Personal decision-making (by economists, certainly) involves all sorts of trade-offs and comparisons of the implications of choices. For instance, time spent remodeling one's basement is time unavailable for working at one's regular job--can you earn more per hour than you'd have to pay professionals to do the work? If so, work overtime and hire the work done. Unless, of course, you expect to gain tremendous satisfaction from doing the job yourself. Spending hours or even days shopping for an item to save a few dollars is another example of failure to consider opportunity costs. "Budgeting sucks!" Almost no one really enjoys budgeting, but there is no good substitute ...