4 Things You Need to Know About Retirement Investment

4 Things You Need to Know About Retirement Investment

Use These Tips to Avoid Common Mistakes with Your Retirement Investment

By Dana Anspach, About.com

Many of you have spent 40+ hours per week, for ten, twenty, thirty or even forty years of your life developing your craft, your career, your area of expertise. This investment of time has provided you with an income, a lifestyle, and for some, allowed you to build a nest egg.

Soon there will come a time where this nest egg becomes your primary source of income. Considering this, wouldn’t it make sense to spend a few hours each week to learn how this will work?

After all, even if you seek professional help, you can’t turn your future livelihood blindly over to someone else to handle. You must learn enough to understand the difference between quality advice and a quality sales pitch.

So here are the 4 things you need to do:

1. Spend Time Educating Yourself About Retirement Investing

Here’s how to start your retirement investment education:

• Read - Browse the book reviews and pick one or two to start with.
• Take Classes – Start with one of these 5 online investment classes.
• If you’re really serious about your education, consider taking parts - or all - of the CRP® curriculum. The American College has online programs and they can direct you to live classes if you want to immerse yourself in a specific topic like investing or taxes

How Not to Make Decisions about Retirement Investment:

• Don’t attend free lunch and dinner seminars about retirement investing – those people are not providing education, they’re just trying to sell you something.

2. When Making Retirement Investment Seek Professional Assistance – Even the Best Athletes Have Coaches

When I say seek professional assistance, I mean exactly that - find a professional, not a sales person. You need a trusted advisor who understands that this is your life savings.
Later in life is not the time go it alone. A good financial advisor will keep you out of trouble.
Here’s how to start your search for the right qualified financial advisor:

• How To Choose A Qualified Advisor
• 5 Questions to Ask A Potential Advisor
• What is the Difference Between a Fee-Only and a Fee-Based Advisor?

3. Lay out a Retirement Investment Plan – And Stick With It

Two quotes to hang your hat by:

· People don’t plan to fail, they fail to plan.

· If you don’t know where you’re going, than any road will get you there.

If you don’t have a plan or don’t know where to start than read:

• 5 Steps You Must Take Within 5 Years of Retirement
• 4 Steps To Determine How Much Money You Need To Retire

Once you have your overall retirement plan, then you lay out your investment plan. When it comes to the investment portion of your plan, remember, there are numerous ways to get from point A to point B. The key to success is KISS – keep it simple, stupid!
Think of your investment like employees; each has an assigned task. Your growth investment have 10-15 years to accomplish their task. If a few bad years in the market come along, and you interrupt them, they will never accomplish their goal.
You must understand the time frame associated with each piece of your retirement investment plan, and let it do its job. Read:

• 3 Rules to Achieve Investment Growth
• Strategies for Creating Retirement Income From a Portfolio
• Why Average Investors Earn Below Average Returns

4. Avoid Retirement Investing Mistakes

Most investor’s success happens not because they make all the right decisions, but because they avoid the wrong ones. These articles can be a great starting place to keep you out of harm's way.

I’m nearing retirement age these things are very helpful in finding the right retirement investment for my retirement savings.