3 Ways to Protect Your Finances For Retirement
If you want to live comfortably during retirement, it takes wise choices, a frugal attitude and hard work to get there.
Yet there’s a danger: there’s a tendency to be vulnerable to scams, poor judgment or advisers when you reach retirement age too.
In fact, according to Allianz, fraud victims at the age of 65 and above lost an average of $30,000 every year. Of course, one in 10 lost more than $100,000.
Here are 3 ways to protect your finances while ensuring this doesn’t happen:
1: Keep Investments Simple
If you have a number of 401(k)s or IRAs, consolidate them so that you can monitor them easily. Another option would be to replace stocks and bonds with mutual funds or exchange-traded funds that will need little or no attention. Better still, keep only two credit cards – one for daily use and the other for automatic payments.
2: Have a Backup
If you have a backup person, you’ll be able to spot missteps or bad advice sooner rather than later. Set up alerts with financial institutions so as to keep you abreast of unusually large transfers. You can use an app such as Mint to see daily activity. Of course, if you cognitive issues, then give your financial advisers and doctors the permission to contact your backup.
3: Create an Investment Policy Statement
Doing this will help you to keep your finances on track. This statement should contain information such as how you will preserve capital, what kind of securities you will hold and how much of your portfolio will be allocated to safe and risky assets. One big benefit from this document is that it will help you resist sales pitches that will make you stray away from the investment strategy.