When is to too late to prepare for retirement?

I often talk to people who think that because they have not started planning in the 20s, its too late now in their 30s, 40s, 50s or even 60s.

While the best time to start planning for your future is when you start work, the next best time is today, or tomorrow.

The purpose of this is not to undo your life experiences to date, but to give some direction for the time you have, allow you to make a decision on what you are going to do and life up your wealth in the time you have.

Let’s look at the extreme, the late 50 year old.

58 is a very common age for me to talk to very nervous people who are unsure about their future. They realise they can no longer pretend to have 10 years till retirement, like they did at 55, 56 and 57 and they are starting to get nervous about their decisions. When you are 30 the impact of a 20K purchase is of no consequence to your retirement but at 58, it might do.

Regardless of where this 58-year-old is at financially a plan can help. How?

Firstly, we can give clarity of when you can retire. Finding out at 58, you cannot (or should not) retire at 65 and you have to work longer might hurt but its better than realising this at 65. It means you can plan for this.

You will have clarity on what retirement looks like and what lifestyle to expect. This way you can work towards this and if need be, make changes now, in decreasing costs, changing assets, pushing career etc to change the capital required for a better retirement.

We can show the impact of working longer and saving your NZ Super, so you can see the benefit and make decisions on this.

If you have a mortgage or you need a house, we can work out for you now if you can keep it in retirement or if you have to downsize, and if you don’t have a house yet we can give you clarity on the realistic price you can pay.

And we can take away the decision paralysis. If we have allowed for a holiday or a large capital expense you can see the impact long term, and either choose to not do it, or if you are going to, you don’t need to worry about the impact, as you know it.

Ultimately while doing your plan at 58 or 62 means you don’t have as long to make changes it will still have a positive impact for the long term.

Yes, you should do this earlier, but unless you have invented a time machine, worrying about woulda, coulda, shoulda is of no value. Let’s look forward, not backwards.

If you have decision paralysis on the future, are nervous about retirement or other goals and want clarity and peace of mind, give us a call.