Plan Your Best Retirement With These 4 Simple Steps

Editor's Note: This story originally appeared on Boldin.

Don’t get me wrong, planning your retirement is a complex endeavor. However, the following four-step framework is designed to put the myriad details in context and make the process easier and more meaningful without too much financial jargon, detailed formulas, or complicated strategies.

Simple retirement planning is a possibility.

Whether you are using an advisor or building your plan on your own, these four steps are more easily accomplished if using a retirement planner to help you build and maintain a personalized and reliable plan.

Step 1: Determine What You Need and Want to Spend in the Future

You can’t make smart decisions today without a clear picture of what you’ll want — and need — to spend in the future. That’s why budgeting for your future lifestyle is the most important and meaningful part of simple retirement planning.

This step helps you clarify the life you want to live: what you’ll be doing, where you’ll be living, who you’ll be with — and how much it will all cost. It turns vague hopes into a defined, actionable vision.

• Start by documenting the basics: mortgage payments, other debt, healthcare costs, and any long-term care needs you expect to face.
• Consider ongoing expenses and how they may evolve over time.
• Don’t forget to log any big one-time expenses you may face down the road — like home renovations, weddings, or bucket-list travel.
• Taxes can be a big budget item for some retirees. Taxes are automatically calculated for you by the Boldin Retirement Planner.
• Lastly, set your desired retirement age and your estimated longevity — two key inputs that shape the entire plan.

These foundational steps give you the clarity you need to build a confident and realistic retirement plan.

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Step 2: Establish Your Retirement Income Sources

So, once you know what you want to spend, it’s time to figure out how you are going to pay for that future. To do this, you’ll want to document your income and savings.

It is important to document all of your income sources and when each will start and end. Possible income sources include:

• A pension if you have one
• Social Security
• Any work income you might earn from a retirement job
• Passive income from real estate investments, hobbies, or other sources
• Your savings and investments and the rate of return on those accounts so that the system can calculate the future value of that money
• Annuities you have purchased or plan to purchase in the future
• Any potential windfalls like an inheritance you might receive in the future
• If you plan to downsize or otherwise release home equity to help fund retirement expenses, you may want to document this future move
• Any sales of assets like a car or second home that would occur in the future and be added to your savings and investments
• A retirement withdrawal plan for how to use savings.

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Step 3: Determine if You Have Adequate Resources

Now comes the moment of truth. Given everything you know and are doing now, do you have enough resources to cover the amount of spending you desire?

(Make sure your plan covers you and your spouse and any other family members who you want to support in some way.)

Is your future secure? If your plan doesn’t yet cover the spending you desire, go back to steps 1 and 2 to adjust your income sources, savings, or expenses until you land on a level that feels realistic and sustainable.

If your baseline retirement plan is secure — congratulations! You’re on solid footing. Now it’s time to move on to Step 4 and explore how to optimize your plan even further.

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Step 4: Protect Your Future from Potential Risks

Being able to cover your known expenses is a huge step toward the future you want, but your plan isn’t done yet. Now you’ll want to take steps to control for risks to your plan.

From inflation and stock market crashes to personal health crises and natural disasters, there is a lot that can go wrong. Your savings and income could go down and expenses could go up.

You’ll want to pressure test your baseline plan for:

• Higher inflation: See how rising prices over time could impact your purchasing power and long-term affordability.
• Lower returns: Test what happens if your investments underperform compared to your expectations.
• A big unexpected expense: Evaluate how a surprise cost — like home repairs or medical bills — could affect your financial stability.
• An earlier than expected retirement due to a job loss: Understand the impact of losing income sooner than planned and retiring earlier than expected. (It is more common than you think.)
• Death of a spouse: Plan for how the loss of a partner could affect income, benefits, and living costs.
• A natural disaster: Consider the financial consequences of recovering from events like wildfires, floods, or earthquakes.
• A long-term care need: Explore how extended medical or caregiving costs might affect your plan.
• A longer than expected life: Make sure your money lasts — even if you live well into your 90s or beyond.

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Bonus Step: Optimize for Greater Wealth, Spending and Security

Finally, you can optimize your plan to maximize your security, wealth, or spending.

There are a wide variety of financial strategies and products that can strengthen your financial plan in a way that is right for your goals and what you value.

If you have your expenses covered and have a reasonable plan for risks, then you may want to optimize your financial plan for the following:

Greater wealth: With everything covered, you may be able to take more risks with investments in order to grow your net worth. Or, perhaps you want to reduce your expenses by limiting the taxes you pay through Roth conversions or other tax strategies like investing in HSAs, 529s, charitable giving, and other ways to reduce taxes.

More spending: If you have excess money after covering the expenses you’ve documented, you may want to splurge. Many retirees boost their travel budgets. Others opt to spend on children and grandchildren. Some retirees have the goal of spending their savings and assets down to zero by the time they die.

Added security: Protecting your lifestyle from any possible risk is a goal for some retirees. Strategies include:

• Guaranteeing adequate income for as long as they might live (no matter how long that turns out to be) through the purchase of lifetime annuities.
• Maximizing insurance for all aspects of life
• Planning carefully for long-term care either through insurance, purchase of an annuity, or funding through savings or the sale of a home.
• Diversifying income and investments — maximizing the number of different types of accounts and money that is available to use under different circumstances
• Having more than adequate cash on hand for emergencies

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