Coffee with Mike- Considering your financial future

In planning for retirement, there are several elements of what we need to consider in terms of your particular financial future. Now, I'm speaking to a camera right now, so I have no idea who's really listening, and I have no idea what your situation is, so let me just run through a couple of things that I think it would be important for you to consider; things that I really can't break down a whole lot, but things that I hope will spur your thinking so that you can break it down. 

Here's some things for you to consider for your retirement planning: 

1. How much debt do you think you can eliminate before you actually retire? 
2. Is that important to you to eliminate all your debt? 
3. Are you on target to do that by a certain age, and is that the age that you want to start considering retirement? 
4. Do the FERS rules allow you to retire at that target age that you're thinking about having no debt? 
5. Is your TSP account actually going to be ready for distribution? Do you not even need your TSP account when you actually retire? You can wait to use it at a later time. 

These things there are things that really fluctuate. They are variable because we don't know what the market is doing, we don't know how long your career is going to be, and we don't know what your high-3 salary average is going to be, so all these things are a little bit different every time we look at them. Therefore we want to look at them every 12 months so that we are assure ourselves that we're actually on track. 

Some other things that we want to think about: 

1. Are you actually going to earn income during retirement? 
2. Are there other sources of income besides what you have for your own retirement plan? In other words, do you have a spouse who's going to contribute to the retirement plan? 
3. Do you have a former spouse who's obligated to contribute to your retirement plan? 
4. Is there an inheritance that you're actually expecting, and you're really thinking about using that for your retirement? 
5. Are you thinking about leaving an inheritance, and therefore it's going to impact your decisions for retirement and how much money you're going to be able to access each and every month? 

Again, these are things that I don't know anything about, and as far as your situation is concerned, you know about it, you need to think about it. As you think about it, how does that begin to impact what you need from the FERS basic annuity, what you need from social security, and what you're going to need from TSP. As you think about all those different things that can enhance what you get from FERS or Social Security and TSP, let's really think about how we can manage a plan that helps us to arrive at exactly the right time, that's most beneficial, most enjoyable for you and for anyone else that you want to share your retirement with.