What Financial Tools Do You Need to Plan Retirement?

Planning for retirement is only easy if you have the right tools. Once you’ve got your toolkit together, you can make a great retirement plan that will take you far. What needs to go in this retirement toolkit? Here are just a few of the basic tools you’ll need.

First, having a great financial advisor can make a difference in your retirement planning experience. If you have a good financial advisor, everything else will be easy. Make sure that you have someone who can teach you about your options, instead of just telling you what you should and should not do.

An online calculator that can help you run different financial scenarios is also a good retirement planning tool. There are many highly sophisticated calculators out there. They’ll help you figure out how much you need to save in order to lead the retirement life you want to lead. They can take everything from your current savings to your age to your retirement monthly needs into account and help you lay out a good plan.

Of course, you also need to know about specific investments that you’ll use to save for retirement. There are Roth IRAs, Traditional IRAs, 401Ks, and tons of other ways to save for retirement. Using tax advantaged options is your best bet here, since you’ll save more money with them and end up giving less to the government. If you aren’t sure which of these saving tools will be best for your needs, check out details on the various options, and talk to your financial advisor about the different plans that are available.