Determining how much savings or annual income you will need to fund your retirement from Fortune 500 can be difficult to pinpoint, but it is a critical component of defining your retirement lifestyle and goals.

Unfortunately, there are as many answers as there are dreams for retirement. The actual dollar amount depends largely on what you plan to do: switch careers, travel, or start a new business. The possibilities are endless, so it’s important that you start considering your options now and set some realistic financial goals for yourself to prepare for your retirement from Fortune 500.

• What are my investment goals?
• How long do I have to invest?
• How long do I expect to live in retirement?
• How much risk am I willing to take?

Your investment goals will depend on how you plan to spend your retirement from Fortune 500. If you don’t have a clear idea just yet, consider your current lifestyle and your dreams. This will help you formulate an investment goal, which you can adjust as retirement age approaches. Next, determine how long it will be before you retire from Fortune 500— your time horizon. Generally speaking, the longer your time horizon, the more risk you may be able to accept in exchange for potentially higher returns. If your time horizon is relatively short, you may not want to accept as much risk and may prefer a more stable investment.

Because it may be hard to imagine yourself as being retired from Fortune 500, it may be even harder to think about where the money for your Fortune 500 retirement will come from. Traditional methods for funding retirement, such as the Canada, or Quebec Pension Plan, Old Age Security, and other retirement benefits, may not meet all your financial needs — especially when people are living longer and retiring at an earlier age. One solution may be to rely more on retirement savings programs that you control, in order to fund an active and comfortable retirement. As company pensions are increasingly less likely to be part of a typical Canadian’s retirement planning framework, ensuring your portfolio can provide adequate returns throughout your retirement will be key.

Here are ways you can align your Fortune 500 retirement planning approach with your current life stage: 

PRESERVE YOUR WEALTH 

(If you are more than five years from retirement from Fortune 500) 

• Determine the retirement lifestyle you aspire to live.
• Calculate how much you have already saved for your Fortune 500 retirement.
• Ensure you are contributing the maximum amounts to all tax-advantaged savings accounts such as Registered Retirement Savings Plans (RRSPs) or Tax-Free Savings Accounts (TFSAs).
• Either pay off all debts or create a plan to pay them off. 

PRESERVE YOUR WEALTH 

(If you are within 5 years before retirement from Fortune 500)

• Start thinking about how long you expect to live in your retirement from Fortune 500 — remember that longevity is key (each member of a 65-year-old couple has a 50% chance of living to 90[7]).
• Estimate your budget — how much income will you need to cover your essential and desired spending goals? Estimate your tax liabilities.
• Take stock of all assets and potential income sources.
• Determine your “funded ratio” by dividing your total assets by your spending goals in retirement. If it is below 100%, talk to your advisor about ways you can increase it before you retire, and be sure to review it regularly.
• Take full advantage of all tax-deferred savings options, catch-up contributions, flexible savings accounts, and tax-advantaged investment solutions.
• 0.32Ensure your investment portfolios are appropriately allocated to help increase the chance of your money lasting as long as you do.

SPEND YOUR WEALTH

(If you are in retirement)

• Meet with your advisor regularly to recalculate your funded ratio.
• Adapt your spending and/or asset allocation according to any changes in your funded ratio.
• Consider setting aside assets to leave a legacy to family or charity.
• Ask someone you trust who is aware of your priorities to ensure your wishes are fulfilled.
• Make sure your records are accessible by that trusted person if they need to act on your behalf. This includes physical as well as digital records.

The Retirement Group is a nation-wide group of financial advisors who work together as a team.

We focus entirely on retirement planning and the design of retirement portfolios for transitioning corporate employees. Each representative of the group has been hand selected by The Retirement Group in select cities of the United States. Each advisor was selected based on their pension expertise, experience in financial planning, and portfolio construction knowledge.

TRG takes a teamwork approach in providing the best possible solutions for our clients’ concerns. The Team has a conservative investment philosophy and diversifies client portfolios with laddered bonds, CDs, mutual funds, ETFs, Annuities, Stocks and other investments to help achieve their goals. The team addresses Retirement, Pension, Tax, Asset Allocation, Estate, and Elder Care issues. This document utilizes various research tools and techniques. A variety of assumptions and judgmental elements are inevitably inherent in any attempt to estimate future results and, consequently, such results should be viewed as tentative estimations. Changes in the law, investment climate, interest rates, and personal circumstances will have profound effects on both the accuracy of our estimations and the suitability of our recommendations. The need for ongoing sensitivity to change and for constant re-examination and alteration of the plan is thus apparent.

Therefore, we encourage you to have your plan updated a few months before your potential retirement date as well as an annual review. It should be emphasized that neither The Retirement Group, LLC nor any of its employees can engage in the practice of law or accounting and that nothing in this document should be taken as an effort to do so. We look forward to working with tax and/or legal professionals you may select to discuss the relevant ramifications of our recommendations.

Throughout your retirement years we will continue to update you on issues affecting your retirement through our complimentary and proprietary newsletters, workshops and regular updates. You may always reach us at (800) 900-5867.

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