If you could answer a yes to these four questions, then you might have everything aligned for you to retire right now. Not in a year or two years from now – right now.

Question 1: Financial Preparedness

The first one is the question of, “Do I have enough?” This is the most obvious one, but not everyone’s a hundred percent sure that their financial assets are going to last the rest of their lifetime. There’s a way to get to this level 10 out of 10 confidence with the question, “Do I have enough?”, and it starts by doing something that looks like this. It’s the creation of your perfect retirement plan focused on three core parts.

Number one is the investment plan, and that’s realizing that your investment strategy may start to look a little bit different now as you get closer to it, into retirement. It’s looking different than what it did maybe 10 or 20 years ago. The second part is the income plan, which really just means identifying the right tax-efficient withdrawal strategy and then what accounts to take from and when. Most likely you’ll have three types of accounts in retirement that are going to be treated differently, at least tax-wise. Designing the withdrawal strategy can actually save a lot in taxes. Then finally, third is the tax plan and just knowing that every financial decision that you make also has a tax impact. But having all three of those plans working together and coordinating, the result looks like this, and that’s what we want to see.

Question 2: Know What You’re Giving Up

Now, onto the second question, “Have I had enough?” You may have or have had a successful career, but if the stresses of your work are starting to outweigh the joy of work, you might be ready to spend more time on things that are more fulfilling or maybe more joy-filled than what work is now.

A client we spoke with not long ago knew what he was good at in his career, and he actually enjoyed doing it. It brought him a lot of fulfillment, too. What is the problem here? That circle of his core competency and what he was really good at began to take less and less time, and the stuff he didn’t like was taking up a bigger piece of his day and his week; it was impacting his mood and stress levels as he got older. He realized there were other things he wanted to spend his time on while he was still at an age where those were available to him.

Question 3: Preparing for Stage Three of Retirement

The third question to think about is, “Do I have enough to do?” What you don’t want to have happen is to get into retirement and a few months later you think, “Is this all that there is?” Something to note is that there are actually five stages of retirement, and the third stage is sort of a letdown stage, or could even be a depression stage.

But if we can do something about it, it could be the best time of your life. Like many of our clients, they were able to avoid that third stage by making sure that they were both financially and emotionally prepared ahead of time. As I think about it, I’ve got a few more videos on this topic that have been helpful to others, so I’m going to put that below in the description below and look for the headline of “Fulfilling Retirement” and then look for some of the videos under that headline to hopefully watch after this.

Question 4: Coordinating With Your Spouse

The next question is if you have a significant other. The question is, “Does my partner want me home all day?” It might sound kind of funny, but I know couples where the wife had a harder time, or the husband had a harder time when their spouse came back home 24/7. It messes with the routine of the other spouse. It takes a readjustment or a redelegation period of figuring out the household duties and overall getting on the same page. This is another thing you can plan ahead for before retirement comes.

If you’re thinking about your retirement more now, be sure to subscribe to this channel because we’ll come out with new videos each week, really focused on making your retirement just a little bit better. Hopefully, these four questions were helpful and then I’ll see you in the next video.

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Disclosures: Securities offered through LaSalle St. Securities LLC (LSS), member FINRA/SIPC. Advisory services offered through LaSalle St. Investment Advisors LLC (LSIA), a Registered Investment Advisor. Streamline Financial Services is not affiliated with LSS or LSIA. LSS is affiliated with LSIA.