At Kennedy Wealth Management, LLC, we have helped countless clients prepare financially for their retirement years. When you’re young and working, this should absolutely be a priority for you if you want to build a future where you can spend the final portion of your life in happiness and relaxation.
However, something a lot of people don’t realize is that there are a lot of other ways to prepare for your retirement aside from just making sure your finances are in order. We want you to be financially well-off, but what good is having a comfortable bank account if you’ve squandered your potential in other ways?
While retirement income planning is our de-facto service that we’re eager to help you with, we have done business with more than enough folks who are now in retirement to observe the many ways that you can prepare yourself, outside of just saving and investing.
Develop a Habit of Exercising
We don’t need to tell you that if you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything. This advice is never more true than when you’re in retirement age, where the consequences of your many life choices start to catch up with your weary body. Unfortunately, countless seniors have scrimped and saved their entire lives for a cushy retirement income, only for their body to betray them, a result of lifelong habits.
Many seniors enter their retirement with obesity, dysfunctional joints, preventable conditions, or any other number of debilitating health conditions. That’s simply no way to live, and we want nothing more for you than to live the last stage of your life happily and healthily.
The most important piece of this is that you can’t just wait until retirement to start whipping your body into shape. Getting into good health is like planting a tree — the best time to do it was 20 years ago, but the second best time is now. While it’s never too late to start working out, it’ll be easier by an order of magnitude to maintain your health in old age if you start now.
The best thing you can do is get your body used to exercise. Once you start to form routines, your body and mind will get used to the wear and tear, making you far more equipped to handle a more fragile body in retirement age. We applaud anyone who takes their health into their own hands, even if they’ve waited for their elderly years to do so, but there’s no way around the fact that things will just go better for you if you start now.
Start Cooking and Eating Healthy
While this point is similar to the point above, it deserves an equal amount of attention, because your health is directly tied to your diet. While exercising can stimulate your muscles, keep your joints healthy, and prevent excessive weight gain, your body will not be exempt from the insidious effects of the modern American diet if you never do anything to start eating healthy.
Fast food, processed junk, soda, and other cornerstones of our modern diet all degrade your body with a slow burn, and you might find yourself dealing with the effects of them in old age. Even if your muscles are working fine, your retirement will be somewhat diminished if you’re dealing with diabetes, immense fatigue, or any other number of adverse conditions caused by an unhealthy diet.
Like working out, you’ll best be served in old age if you can make a habit out of healthy eating now, as well as cooking. A bad diet will be much more consequential in the future than it is now, and they say that old habits die hard. If you can’t get it under control now, what makes you think you’ll be able to when the effects of a poor diet are much more debilitating?
This also concerns your finances. Once you’re retired and in relaxation mode, it can be tempting to eat out excessively. While it’s very possible to consistently eat healthy at restaurants, it won’t be easy on your wallet. Even with a well-developed retirement income plan, eating out all the time can burn quite a hole in your finances. Learning to cook right now is definitely in your best interest.
Cultivate Your Relationships
Everyone is in a different place when they retired. Some of our clients have had enormous families with more grandkids than they can count, while others have flown solo their whole lives. Some have kept up with good friends over the years, and others still have shared the majority of their life with their spouse.
Whatever relationships you have, spend your time nurturing them now. There is, of course, more than enough time for you to enjoy your retirement in peaceful relaxation, but the need to socially connect is inherent in all of us, and you might be sad if your retirement income plan leads you to a nice cushy life, only to find you’ve burned bridges with everyone who is important to you.
The advice may sound a tad cliché, but treasure your relationships. If you have a family and children, ensure that you’ll be able to enjoy their company in the future. Maybe there are old friends who go way back who are also on track to retire. Why not get back in touch with them?
The one thing that most working adults lack the most is time, and once you’re in retirement, you finally have the luxury of having all the time you’ll ever need — spend it with the people you love.
Develop a Hobby
Some would argue that you need not develop a hobby in your younger years since you’ll have all the time in the world in retirement age. We disagree — having skills, hobbies, and interests that already have a solid foundation will be a boon to your retirement life.
The biggest struggle for most adults, as we mentioned above, is not having enough time. This is frustrating for people who have interests and passions, but never enough time to commit to them. What an incredible feeling it is to finally immerse yourself in something that you’ve been waiting a literal lifetime to be able to commit to!
But another important part of this is that having an established hobby or interest will also be a good way to give you drive and direction. Many retired folks actually talk about how they get bored after a few years of not working, and it can be mentally exhausting trying to pick up something completely new.
If you’ve already built up a skill or immersed yourself in some kind of passion, you’ll be deep enough to where you won’t face the prospect of being bored, and you’ll be able to feel fulfilled for much of your retired life.
Retirement Income Planning in Calabasas
There is a balance in all things, and although these things are all incredibly important for your retired life, their significance is diminished if you lack the money to support yourself, similar to the way that all the money in the world doesn’t mean much if you don’t have anything else.
We urge you to start preparing for your retirement now, in every way that’s possible. That includes the things written in this list, and, of course, your finances. We can’t help with the former, but we specialize in the latter, and we will be happy to help you with your retirement income planning so that you can have the brightest future possible.
Ready to get started? If you’re in or around the Calabasas area, contact us today!