Don’t get me wrong, planning your retirement is a complicated effort. However, the following four step frameworks are designed to place countless details in context and make the process easier and meaningful without facilitating financial jargon, detailed formulas, or complex strategies. A simple retirement plan is possible.
Whether you’re using an advisor or planning your own, Boldin Retirement Planner makes these four steps easier to accomplish. It is a comprehensive tool that helps you build and maintain personalized, reliable plans beyond saving and investing.
Step 1: Decide what you need and what you want to spend in the future
You can’t make wise decisions today without a clear grasp of what you want and need to spend in the future. That’s why budgeting your future lifestyle is the most important and meaningful part of a simple retirement plan.
This step will help you clarify the life you want to live: What you are doing, where you live, who you are with, and how much it costs. It turns ambiguous hope into a defined, practical vision.
- Start by documenting the basics: mortgage payments, other debts, healthcare costs, and the long-term care needs you expect to face.
- For ongoing costs:
- Use PlannerPlus Budget to enter your expenditures projected into over 75 categories and subcategories.
- Do you prefer a simpler approach? Enter your total spending using the Basic Budget.
- Either way, make sure to explain how your expenses evolve over time.
- Don’t forget to record any major one-off expenses you may be on your way, whether it’s home renovations, weddings, or bucket list trips.
- Taxes can be a big budget item for some retirees. Taxes are automatically calculated by the Boldin Retirement Planner.
- Finally, set you up Desired retirement age And your Estimated life expectancy – Two important inputs that form the entire plan.
These basic steps give you the clarity you need to create a confident and realistic retirement plan.
Step 2: Establish a source of retirement income
So once you know what you want to spend, it’s time to understand how you pay for that future. To do this, you need to document your income and savings.
It is important to document all your income sources. Possible sources of income are:
- If you have it, then pension
- social security
- Work income that could earn you from retirement work
- Passive income from real estate investments, hobby or other sources
- Your savings and investments, and the return rate of those accounts, so that the system can calculate the future value of that money
- Annual payments you have purchased or plan to buy in the future
- Falling potential wind like inheritance you may receive in the future
- If you plan to release home equity in a miniaturization or other way to fund your retirement expenses, we recommend documenting this future move
- Sales of assets such as cars and second homes that occur in the future and add to savings and investments
- Resignation withdrawal plan on how to use your savings. (The Boldin Retirement Planner can assist you with this important task.)
Step 3: Determine if you have the right resources to cover your retirement spending
Now comes the moment of truth. Considering everything you know and do now, do you have enough resources to cover the amount of spending you want? (Make sure your plans cover you, your spouse, and other families you want to support in some way.)
The Boldin Retirement Planner provides a variety of analytics to your insights library.
- Chances for a success score: Based on your current savings, spending and investment strategies, we estimate how likely your plan is to succeed.
- Complete Financial Health Assessment: Evaluate your overall financial health in key areas such as savings, liability, insurance and risk preparation.
- Monte Carlo Projection: Run thousands of simulations to show how your plans work in a variety of market conditions and economic scenarios.
- Lifetime income analysis: It breaks down expected sources of income over time, including social security, withdrawals, pensions and more.
- Cash flow analysis: Details of your annual income, expenses and savings can help you understand that you may face surplus or shortfalls.
Is your future safe?
If your plan doesn’t already cover the spending you want, Return to steps 1 and 2 Adjust your income stream, savings, or expenses until you land on a realistic and sustainable level.
If your baseline retirement plan is safe – Congratulations! You are on a solid footing. Now it’s time to move on Step 4 Additionally, find out how to further optimize your plan.
Step 4: Protect your future from potential risks
Being able to cover known costs is a big step towards the future you want, but your plans are yet to be made. Now you will want to take steps to control the risks of your plans.
From inflation and stock market crashes to personal health crises and natural disasters, there are many things that can cause problems. Your savings and income may decrease and costs may increase.
The good news is that there are many options to protect your finances. And the Boldin Retirement Planner helps you understand many of them. You want to put pressure on testing your baseline plan:
- Higher inflation: See how price increases over time affect your purchasing power and long-term affordability.
- Low return: Test what happens when your investment is poorly performing compared to your expectations.
- Unexpectedly big costs: We assess how surprising costs like home repairs and medical costs affect your financial stability.
- Earlier than expected due to unemployment: Understand the impact of losing income earlier than planned and resigning earlier than expected. (That’s more common than you think.)
- Death of a spouse: Plan how partner losses will affect income, benefits and cost of living.
- Natural disasters: Consider the economic consequences of recovering from events such as wildfires, floods, and earthquakes.
- Long-term care needs: Find out how extended medical and nursing costs will affect your plans.
- A longer life than expected: Make sure your money continues even if you live well since the 90s.
Do you want more? Find out 21 things that may be wrong and what to do about them.
Bonus, Step 5: Optimize for Wealth, Expenses and/or Security
Finally, you can optimize your plans to maximize your security, wealth, or spending.
We have a wide range of financial strategies and products that can strengthen your financial plans in a way that suits your goals and what you value.
If you are covering costs and have a reasonable plan for risk, we recommend optimizing your next financial plan:
Greater wealth
With everything covered, you may be able to take more risks with your investments to increase your net worth.
Or you’d like to reduce costs by limiting taxes paid through Roth’s conversion or other tax strategies such as HSA, 529, charitable contributions, and other ways to reduce taxes.
More spending
If you have extra money after covering your documented expenses, you may want to splurge. Many retirees will boost their travel budget. Others choose to spend on their children and grandchildren.
Some retirees have a goal of spending their savings and assets to zero before they die. If this is interesting to you, try spending options that maximize under the money flow > try withdrawal strategies.
Security has been added
Protecting lifestyles from possible risks is a goal for some retirees. The strategy is as follows:
- Through the purchase of a lifetime pension, as long as they may live (no matter how long they are), they will ensure a reasonable income. Learn about the pros and cons of pensions.
- Maximize insurance for all aspects of life
- Plan carefully for long-term care through insurance, pension purchases, savings funds, or home sales. Explore the costs of long-term care insurance and look at long-term care insurance alternatives.
- Diversification of income and investments – Maximize the number of different types of accounts and money that can be used under different circumstances
- Have the right cash on hand for emergencies
Easy retirement plan with Boldin
Retirement Planner is not actually a simple four-step process, but Boldin Retirement Planner makes it much easier than building your own spreadsheet. DIY planning has an advantage over using only a financial advisor. Creating and maintaining an overall plan will increase your financial know-how and increase your confidence in money and life.
Updated April 17, 2025
