The Boston College Retirement Research Center indicates that the four most important things to do to increase your retirement’s financial security are:
♦Spend less (and Simultaneously Save More). Essentially, allowing you to reduce your income need while simultaneously salting away more for your future retirement.
♦Delay your Retirement. This allows you to extend the time available to save more and to grow your assets for a longer period, thereby, providing you with a larger “retirement nest egg.” Likewise, you’ll be simultaneously shortening the retirement lifetime you’ll need to underwrite.
♦Delay collecting Social Security. By delaying collecting your Social Security until your “Full Retirement Age” or better yet, until Age 70, you’ll substantially increase your retirement income while assuring that you’ll receive higher future cost of living increases.
♦Use your Home’s Equity. Some retirees move to less expensive areas to “stretch their dollars”. Others prefer to use reverse mortgages to tap their home equity to provide retirement income without moving. Though not without caveats, in the right circumstances, reverse mortgages can generate tax free income or protect portfolios in ways we’re just beginning to fully recognize.
There is often elegance is simplicity.