Skip to main content

5 Ways to Prepare for Retirement

While many Americans are primarily concerned with their current financial situation, it is important to think about the future no matter what your household budget looks like. In 2004, the U.S. Department of Labor outlined 5 easy steps to preparing yourself for comfortable retirement living.

  • Know your retirement needs. Retirement can be expensive, so you will need to know and understand what it will take to successfully save for the future. Experts say you will need at least 70% of your pre-retirement income in order to keep up your current standard of living once you are no longer working.
  • Find out about your Social Security benefits. The average retiree currently receives roughly 40% of their pre-retirement income through Social Security. Visit www.socialsecurity.gov to learn more about the benefits of Social Security.
  • Contribute to a tax-sheltered savings plan. If your employer offers a program such as a 401 (k) it is wise to sign up and contribute as much money as possible. Contributions to a 401(k) are made automatically from your paycheck, your taxable income will be lower therefore costing you less, and many times your employer will match a percentage of your contribution.
  • Put Your Money into an Individual Retirement Account An IRA, or Individual Retirement Account is a simple way to save money for retirement and gain tax advantages. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, if you contributed $3,000 per year into your IRA earning 7% interest, you would have $75,387 in just 15 years!
  • Don’t Touch Your Savings Keep yourself from tapping into your retirement savings. By using retirement savings early, you will not only lose principal and interest, but you will also lose your tax benefits. If you change jobs, simply roll over your savings directly into an IRA or into a new plan with your new employer.

Remember, Financial security doesn’t just happen, it requires planning, commitment and money. For more information or to access free financial education log on to http://www.consumercredit.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tom_Palange
Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Learn What is Search Engine Optimization & How to Optimize Your Website For Search Engines

SEO is an action from a webmaster/owner of the website to optimize the website for search engines, to receive maximum traffic and increase ranking in the search engine result pages(SERPs). There are different types of SEO. Some are very specific, trying to dominate very targeted audience, and some are for targeting wide and general audience. Search Engine Optimization is quite long process, and it requires from a webmaster constant testing and tracking, to see what works and what doesn't. If you are a webmaster, then it's vital to know SEO, because it's a free, effective and clever way to get traffic to your website. There are many guides available on SEO, so you can read them and learn, if you want to be an expert. Why Does A Website Needs SEO? Most of the websites on the Internet get their main traffic from search engines, like Google, Yahoo & MSN. If you website cannot be located by search engines, or your content is not indexed in their database, then you are missin

Credit card debt catches up with Britons

By Cesar G. Soriano, USA TODAY USAToday.com - London : "This Christmas season, the hottest-selling gifts in Europe are pricey American products such as iPods, the Xbox 360 and celebrity-inspired fashions. That kind of shopping has led to a very American problem: credit card debt." Nationwide, 34% of Britons say they will use credit cards or store cards to pay for their holiday purchases this year. And one in five say they are still paying off their gifts from last Christmas, according to a December poll by Zopa, an online lending agency. "The UK has adopted the American habit of credit with vigor, and consequently consumers are rapidly getting in over their heads," says Steve Rhode, president of Myvesta.org, a non-profit, debt-relief group. In August, U.S.-based Myvesta opened an office in Britain to deal with the growing number of Britons in debt. The number of people filing for bankruptcy or insolvency in England and Wales rose 46% from 2004 to 2005 to a record, a

Laptop ergonomics

Article by Franklin N. Tessler Repost from MacWorld For years, using a laptop meant putting up with an undersized screen, a puny hard drive, and an anemic processor. Not anymore. Today’s PowerBooks and iBooks are powerful enough to be used as everyday computers. But they lag far behind desktop computers when it comes to ergonomics. For example, you can’t position a laptop’s display and keyboard separately to reduce your risk of neck or wrist injury. Trackpads and other integrated pointing devices compound the problem by requiring that designers position the keyboard away from the laptop’s edge, making the keys hard to reach without using the laptop’s built-in wrist rest. And if you’re not careful, the sharp edge on the front of newer PowerBooks can put even more pressure on the nerves, blood vessels, and tendons in your wrists. Beyond these fundamental design flaws, the simple fact that laptops are portable can exacerbate their ergonomic hazards. Thanks to improved batteries and ubiqui