Retirement financial resolutions for 2018
New Year financial resolutions are like investor complaint filings with regulators: they typically wane during positive stock markets. In good times, the thinking must go, why do anything differently?
Take it from these retirement experts — from top advisers to a recent retiree himself — there is still plenty of room to improve your retirement picture in 2018:
Play mind games. With the latest “Star Wars” episode fresh in mind, author Jan Cullinane (“The Single Woman’s Guide to Retirement,” AARP/Wiley) is channeling her inner Jedi. She’s using tricks from the world of behavioral economics to improve financial habits.
“Trick your mind into being more money savvy by doing simple things,” she says, including paying cash whenever possible because it makes us feel the loss of money more acutely. Another trick: Reframe your thoughts on spending by calculating how many hours or days you need to work to afford whatever you are thinking of buying.
Redirect a payment. With their youngest child heading into her final semester of college, Marcia Mantell and her husband, Dan, are resolving to save the equivalent of those college tuition payments in their retirement accounts. Mantell, founder of Mantell Retirement Consulting Inc., figures the added contributions will help “purchase” a couple of years of retirement, meaning the couple (now in their mid-50s) will be able to retire a little sooner.
Be more strategic about charity. Veteran financial adviser Jonathan Guyton is waiving some of his advisory fees on assets pegged for clients’ charitable causes and is helping clients think more strategically about their donor-advised funds given the recently signed federal tax law. The funds allow donors to collect a tax deduction for the gift for the year it is given, but lets them accrue the money over time and designate it to specific charities later.
Avoid bitcoin. York University finance professor Moshe Milevsky, who has written extensively about annuities, is urging savers to take some stock-market profits from recent years and put them into annuities that pay income for life in 2018. And, “stay away from bitcoin, etherium and other cryptocurrencies,” he says.
Take smaller steps. Dana Anspach, a financial planner and founder of Sensible Money LLC, is tired of unkept resolutions, so she’s urging clients to think about smaller goals.
“If you never work out, it’s unrealistic to set a New Year’s resolution to go to the gym every day,” she says. By the same token, she’s urging clients to find $100 a month in their spending to save instead, or boost their 401(k) accounts by 1 percent.
Get a housing game plan. Susan Collins, executive director of The Transition Network, is planning to downsize sooner rather than later.
“Housing is a hot issue for our members and being a single woman, as many of our members are, I need to ensure my own long-term sustainability by moving my housing plan forward,” she said. “It has two goals: Downsizing and moving closer to my siblings. At some point, either I’m taking care of them or they’re taking care of me and a 20-minute distance between us is better than 45.”
Forget retirement. Finally, Michael Kitces, a partner with Pinnacle Advisory Group and publisher of the blog Nerd’s Eye View, is trying to forget the word retirement.
“It’s because retirement implies you’re supposed to literally retire and not be engaged in any kind of work,” he says. “Instead, think of your coming transition as ‘financial independence,’ the ability to choose to do whatever you want to do to stay active, regardless of any need for income.”