Some thoughts on Finances during Retirement.

f ever there were a generic issue during retirement that influences most retirees, that issue would be finances.

We oldies are where we are because of decisions we have made. Many of those are irreversible and almost nobody can look back and say “I have no spilt milk in my past”

The survey we did seems to confirm that there are many other issues that also complicate senior citizens financial survival and that most are issues from the past … like assisting their children with large amounts of money when we go on retirement and spending royally on the high life for a while.

HOWEVER, THERE IS A STRATEGY WE CAN IMPLEMENT TO COPE WITH DIMINISHING FINANCES IN A COST-INCREASING SOCIETY.

The greatest lesson these things should teach us is how to live NOW in a manner that will avoid compounding the effect as we move into the future. This is something I would label as a strategy to avoid the NEGATIVE COMPOUNDING of your financial lifestyle into the future.

It may well be too late to recover the financial spilt milk, but it can never be too late to optimise your situation to ensure it does not get worse in future. This can only be done if we are willing to apply a seriously disciplined strategy of budgetary control that makes sure that our financial lifestyle at whatever unpleasant or restrictive level is planned LIKE A FINANCIAL PIPELINE RUNNING INTO THE FUTURE AND NOT LIKE A FUNNEL.

We must understand that TIME IS NOT OUR FRIEND leading us into the future, because financial recovery leading to a better financial standard is no longer possible. The reality is that now our best course of action is to AVOID borrowing from the future to subsidise the present and make peace with a standard we would NOT choose IF we had a choice.

Aim for the best you can with what you have and be mindful of the fact that you are probably streets ahead of most of mankind on planet earth.

Savings and strategy are the two headlines you should concentrate on, and we will try to give a few guidelines in a following mini article.

Written by Paul Rosenbrock