3 common retirement mistakes to avoid
Every working professional might have one common goal in life: retirement. Since retirement can be a big step, you might put in years of hard work and efforts to get it after you start earning. While you might think that you might have taken all the right measures to reach your retirement comfortably, there can be specific things that you might be doing it wrong all this while. Before you begin your retirement planning, you should rectify these top three common mistakes in case you have already started:
- Delaying your retirement planning until the last minute
Retirement planning can be a crucial part of your financial portfolio. It can act as a plan-of-action to meet your post-retirement goals, such as leading a comfortable lifestyle after retirement, traveling to different cities, starting your business venture, pursuing interesting hobbies, and so on.
Although retirement planning can be essential, many of you might delay it, assuming that it is too soon to think about future. Since retirement planning can be a long process, it is essential to start the process at a young age. If you begin planning at a young age, you can be able to understand how much resources you should accumulate to meet your post-retirement goals as well as live a stress-free life after the flow of your professional income stops. However, delaying the retirement planning until the last minute can lead to chaos when you near your retirement age.
- Surrendering your Provident Fund (PF) account
PF account is a pension plan that can allow you to receive a regular flow of income as well as receive better returns after your retirement period. Under PF, you can select between the Public Provident Fund (PPF) and an Employee Provident Fund (EPF). Before reaching the retirement period, you can invest in a PF account to grow your funds and liquidate it after the flow of regular income stops.
Today, many of you might wish to retire before the usual retirement age in India. After retirement, you might wish to withdraw the accumulated wealth under your PF account. While dipping into your PF investment can seem the right choice after retirement, you should not do so until the completion of your actual retirement year. Staying invested under your PF account can allow you to secure your corpus as well as receive tax-saving benefits.
- Avoiding your medical costs
After you cross your retirement age, you might become prone to severe health conditions, such as cancer, stroke, and kidney failure, and so forth. Since the severity of such diseases can be high, it can be crucial to treat them with adequate funds and utmost care. Due to the rising medical inflation, hospital bills and medical expenses can skyrocket, which is why you might ignore the healthcare costs.
Treating your illnesses can be crucial since it can lead to life-threatening concerns, such as death. If you do not have adequate resources to cure your illness, you might end up using your retirement savings. Inadequate retirement planning can make you dip into your retirement savings to tackle with a medical emergency.
As highlighted above, your retirement can be the most crucial period of your life. Since you might strive hard to reach a comfortable retirement plan, it should be planned in advance and with proper guidance. The right help during the retirement planning process can ensure that you do not make mistakes and errors. Moreover, it can ensure that all your post-retirement goals are successfully met whether you retire early or late.