#427 - How to Plan Your Agile Retirement: Stage 3 - Make Your Strategy Resilient

Now that you have come up with a retirement vision and learned to create a retirement plan that reflects your vision it’s time to make your plan agile. On this episode, you’ll learn why you need to have an agile retirement plan and how to make your plan resilient to the unexpected forces that could derail your retirement plans. Make sure to stick around until the end of the episode to hear BW talk about why it’s so important to master the fundamentals of retirement planning.

“Learn why you need to have an agile retirement plan.”

Don’t get overwhelmed by retirement planning

Over fast few months I’ve been working with a project manager to create an SOP (standard operating procedure) for Agile Retirement Management. This is such a huge project and it can be easy to get overwhelmed. But just like planning your own retirement can be complicated and overwhelming when you break the giant project into smaller actionable steps, it becomes more manageable. Walking through baby steps one by one takes away a bit of the overwhelm that can come with such a grand project.

Creating a resilient plan will help you prepare for the unexpected

In the last episode, you learned how to turn your retirement vision into a feasible plan. But just like with any plan, it can be easy to knock your retirement plan off course. This is why it is important to create a resilient plan. Incorporating resiliency into your plan will help you to prepare for the unexpected.

“Discover how to make your plan resilient to the unexpected forces that could derail your retirement plans.”

What could knock you off course on your retirement journey?

There are many things that could derail your retirement. Sequence of return risk is one. The markets don’t provide the same returns each year and these ups and downs can greatly affect your retirement–especially if there are a few bad years at the beginning of retirement. Those bad years could easily knock your retirement plans off course.

Inflation is another issue. As we discussed all last month, inflation over time can put a dent in your purchasing power.

Unplanned life events have a way of sneaking up and catching us off guard. Illness, death, long-term care events, or children in need are further events that could impact your retirement plan.

The most common disruption of retirement plans is you. You may simply change your mind. Since you are always changing your needs, wants, and wishes change over time.

Listen in to hear how you can make your retirement resilient against all of these bumps in your retirement road.

How to develop slack in your retirement plan

It is important to have slack built into your system. Similar to the way that a very taut rope may break if you try to adjust it, we need to ensure that there is a bit of slack in the line of your retirement plan so that you can ensure that your desired life outcomes are feasible. When you press play you’ll hear how building a pie-cake can help you create slack in your retirement plan.

“Having more money won’t increase your level of happiness. ”

OUTLINE OF THIS EPISODE OF THE RETIREMENT ANSWER MAN

PRACTICAL PLANNING SEGMENT

[3:08] You don’t need to get overwhelmed by retirement planning
[5:05] You need to create a resilient plan to prepare for the unexpected
[7:10] Why you need slack in your retirement plan
[12:12] The difference between the return on your money and return of your money
[14:32] How to build resilience into your retirement plan
[25:27] How the pie cake can help you build resiliency in your plan