Retirement Planning

If retirement is just leaving your 8-5 job, you're likely to struggle. Instead, if retirement is about your next chapter and living your best life, we can't wait to help you discover exactly what that involves! 

The financial planners at Envision Financial Planning have worked with many individuals and couples to help cash flow their post work lives. Planning for a successful retirement involves more than money. Where will you live? If you retire before age 65, how will you fund your healthcare? How will you spend your days? While many of us have hobbies we enjoy, we will also need to find other activities and interests to keep us physically and mentally engaged. 

There are several ways to save for retirement:

1. By far the most popular way is a retirement plan offered by your employer. For-profit companies usually offer 401k plans, not-for-profit companies usually offer 403b plans and governmental plans often offer 457 plans. All of these plans may offer an incentive for making contributions in the form of matching contributions. For example, if you contribute 6% of pay, your employer may "match" you $0.50 on the $1 or an additional contribution of 3%.  Your retirement income will depend on how much you saved, your employer matching contributions and investment returns you experienced.
2. Some lucky employees, particularly in government service, may also have access to a defined benefit retirement plan. In these types of plan, you may or may not be required to contribute. Instead of selecting your investments, your employers "defines" your benefit based on your pay and your year's of service with the employer.
3. Individual retirement accounts can be used by those that don't have access to an employer sponsored plan. In addition, many people choose to roll over their workplace retirement dollars to an IRA once they retire.
4. After-tax savings can be a great way to meet pre-retirement financial goals, help to retire before penalty-free withdrawals are allowed from workplace savings and just provide flexibility. 
5. Other individuals may inherit assets from family. These assets may be given to you outright or in trust. Some assets may be after-tax and other assets may be in retirement plans or annuities. It's very important to understand the tax rules around each of these and how they can compliment your overall retirement planning.