Planning Your Golden Years:

A Retirement Guide

More tips:

• Avoid borrowing or cashing in your retirement plans early – even if it’s just a small amount. Both can mean significantly less money at retirement.
• Consider joining an investment club to get both the know-how and motivation to start investing. Visit www.better-investing.org for information on starting an investment club. It can be fun, and profitable!
• Talk with a financial planner before you start withdrawing money from your retirement plans. The rules about withdrawals are complicated, and if you don’t do it right you can end up paying expensive taxes and penalties.

Here are several resources for finding a financial planner:

The Financial Planning Association: 1-800-322-4237 or www.fpanet.org

The National Association of Personal Financial Advisors: 1-888-333-6659 or www.napfa.org

Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards: 1-888-237-6275 or www.CFP-Board.org

Pensions: Pensions can be very confusing, and employees often don’t know how they are managed by their employer — or how much they’ll get at retirement. If you work for a smaller employer in particular, it may be difficult to get the information you need to plan.

By law, however, your employer is required to give you a Summary Plan Description of your retirement plan if you request it and an Individual Benefit Statement once a year. If you can’t get these documents, contact the Department of Labor for help.

You or your spouse may have to make a choice at retirement whether to take a larger pension for the employee’s lifetime, or a smaller payment for the lifetime of the employee or their spouse, whichever lives longer. It’s important to think this issue through carefully to make the best choice for your situation. Believe it or not, some people have pensions coming to them and don’t know it. They may have left a job, for example, not realizing they were entitled to benefits. You can search for lost pensions at www.pbgc.gov.

For a free booklet to help you understand retirement plans, contact the US Department of Labor at 800-998-7542.

Part-time Work: This may depend on what you plan to do in retirement, and how many hours you’ll be able to work. If you enjoy your current job but want to cut back, find out whether your company hires contractors or part-time workers.

If you want to pursue a different part-time job or business during retirement, can you start apprenticing now part-time to find out what the work is really like, or to start building experience or credentials? The more homework you do before you retire, the more likely you are to make a smooth transition afterward.