Financial Planning - Preparing Ahead Stage

Hey Fellow Knowledge Seekers!

It’s your friendly Unfussy Scholar once again to bring you new content.

This blog post will be a continuation of the 4 stages of the financial planning series. I want to tackle each stage in more detail, so I’ll provide separate posts for them.

The last post was about the Moving Up stage and for this one we’ll discuss the Preparing Ahead stage.

The third stage in the 4 financial planning stages is the preparing ahead stage. It’s the stage where your responsibilities to your family start to lessen.

Your kids are likely in the latter stages of college or have already graduated and are starting their own lives. 

It’s the stage where your focus will go back to yourself and your spouse since your kids are all grown up. 

There’s also a possibility that you’re further established in your career here. If not, the lessening responsibility to your kids will help free up some money.

Since the focus will be on yourself, this is the stage where you will once again put priority on preparing for your retirement, health, etc.

We’ll look at the things that you’ll need to focus on at this stage.

1. Prepare for Retirement

You won’t be working forever. There will come a time when you’ll retire, which is why you must prepare for it.

If you’ve started early, great! You just need to continue increasing your nest egg to have more when you retire. But if you haven’t started yet, you need to do it now.

You will need to try and catch up to ensure you’ll have enough money to use once you stop working. One thing that you can do to not worry too much about how much you have is to invest for cash flow.

When you get assets that will put money in your pocket monthly, you won’t have to worry about having a big nest egg.

The constant cash flow will take care of you during retirement. Just make sure the cash flow coming in is enough for all of your expenses.

2. Make Sure You Have Healthcare

Another thing you will need to focus on during this stage is to have healthcare. And I’m not just talking about the current HMO or health insurance mentioned in the previous stages.

Though those things are important, the healthcare you’ll need to prepare for is healthcare when you’re retired.

It’s not uncommon to experience health issues as we get older. Even if we live a healthy lifestyle, there are just health issues that start to appear as we age.

This also means it’s going to be more expensive as we get sick. And it’s the reason you need to make sure your health will be covered when you retire.

Take note, that your current HMO and health insurance might not cover your illnesses once you reach a certain age (usually 60).

So, you might have to find healthcare that will provide coverage even in your old age. If you don’t do this, a big portion, or even the majority, of your retirement money will just go toward addressing future health issues.

3. Continue to Live Life

Finally, don’t forget the most important thing and that’s to live life. Yes, preparing and making sure we’ll have money when we retire is important.

But it’s equally important that we still enjoy our life from time to time. I don’t agree with the mindset that you can only enjoy life once you retire from working.

Life is too short! Why wait until you’re old before you start living it? Make sure to always balance out work with play.

Remember, the things that we enjoy in life are what make life beautiful and meaningful. If we only focus on work, life becomes dull and miserable.

So, don’t live a miserable life. Always take time to enjoy and live. This will help remind you what you’re living for.

It’s important to prepare properly for your retirement. You want to make sure you’ll have money to use, as well as healthcare coverage that will address your health needs.

But it’s also important that you don’t put all your focus on just preparing. Take time to enjoy your life now and don’t wait when you’re already too old to do it.

“Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it, and others do just the same with their time”. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Keep on Learning,

The Unfussy Scholar

P.S. Please share this post with a friend or family if you find what was discussed here valuable. 🙂