Retirement Income Planning Tips

By Brent Meyer — SafeMoney.com Founder & Editor Reviewed by Licensed Financial Professionals  |  SafeMoney.com — Trusted Since 2011  |  Updated Regularly Quick Answer: Discover essential retirement income planning tips for lifelong financial security. Learn how to secure your future today with SafeMoney.com. If only retirement income planning were as easy as answering one question: “What is your number for lifetime retirement security?” That would be nice if retirement boiled down to just one number . But this oversimplifies what it takes to enjoy a secure retirement because, in truth, it requires a customized income planning approach. Why? Because determining how much money you need in retirement is just as much a personal question as it is a mathematical one. Just think about your goals and what you might need financially to make them happen. Do you plan to travel? To begin a career ‘second act’ by getting involved with entrepreneurship or consulting? To donate time and resources to causes that are near and dear to you personally? Bottom-line, everyone will have different income needs. So, here are five important tips to help guide you through your retirement income planning process. You can also further explore some topics by checking out the other SafeMoney articles linked to throughout this piece. 1. Maintain Self-Determination and Own Your Income Plan  It’s very important that you “own” your personal 30-year retirement plan. You might have seen the “black box” approach that financial companies promote as a way to attract you to their brand of products and services. However, retirement isn’t a simple matter of putting a few numbers in boxes online and calculating an answer. An effective way to really take control of your retirement plan is by having a clear idea of what your income and expenses will be.   A proven-to-be-effective strategy for tracking those is using a 30-year planning spreadsheet that can model and forecast your income, expenses, and change in assets. 2. Realistically Model and Forecast Your Income and Expenses Using your 30-year (or longer) retirement planning spreadsheet (“PLAN.xls”), think through and realistically forecast your expenses and income. If you were to graph the process of life through retirement, it might look like climbing up a hill on one side to the peak. Then it could slowly descend on the other side of the hill to the valley below. We might call this