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According to the Social security administration, 95% of people will not be able to retire comfortably. Unfortunately, this stat could have been alleviated by most people from some simple and thorough planning for the costs they will be faced with after retirement.
Of course, food cost is one of the biggies that most people overlook when planning this important stage. Most people get so caught up in planning for their housing, cars, and other larger expenses, they forget about this everyday, seemingly trivial expenses. Obviously, as I'm sure you are aware of now, food costs can really add up if you're not careful.
In planning for these food costs for retirement, first of all, sit down and figure out exactly what you spend on food every week now. Now figure out how much that figure is per month, and then per year. You should already be doing this process now in keeping track of your expenses, and most people do a very poor job of tracking their expenses before retirement as well. However, that's another story for another day.
Once you've gotten this figured out, now simply multiply that number by about 25 or 30 (usually safe) and you've got about how much money you will need for your food expenses when you retire. Of course, this number isn't perfect, depending on how long you live once you retire. Obviously, you don't know this, so you have to at least do what you can.
Once you know this, that's great, but you also have to take into consideration your other expenses as well. In your retirement planning process, every expense must be accounted for; without this clarity, you can never achieve your retirement goals, whatever they may be. Unfortunately, it's this same lack of clarity that stops most people from having enough money when they retire.
In this process, there is a lot of great retirement planning software that will make this stage much easier. Also, you might try doing a quick internet search for retirement planning calculator, and you will get up literally millions of results. There are many financial companies that will offer you these calculators for free so that you use them and hopefully get hooked on ultimately hiring that company and their services. Whether you do this or not, you can certainly still benefit from the free software available.
Now, once you know this info, you need to figure out how you plan on getting that money to live on. For most people, this will be achieved thought the stock market, whether it be mutual funds, savings bonds, foreign currency exchange, futures, or regular stock investing.
Of course, you can also invest in real estate and other assets as well. If you aren't financially educated and don't know how to tell a good investment from a bad one, you'll either want to read books and educate yourself, or hire a financial advisor to tell you the best investments to put your money into. Obviously, becoming financially educated yourself is certainly preferably, because you will have the opportunity to spot investment opportunities on your own.
Remember, nobody else will ever care as much about your financial situation as you, so being able to do this is invaluable. However, the most important part at this state is to either use your own or somebody else's expertise to help you find the top investment vehicle to help you achieve your goals.
Once you've done these planning food cost for retirement and other expenses steps, and decided on the right investment vehicle to get you there, you are well on your way to achieving your goals. Now it's simply time to take action.