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I havent posted on here in a while as I have been staying busy working on new ventures. Recently I came across

a book called "The 10x Rule" by Grant Cardone. This book is incredible! Everything he mentions makes perfect sense.

If you feel like you have not reached your full potential you have to read this book!

More people investing in stock market these days are worried that they might lose everything and they might not be able to recover what they have lost. Especially those who are planning to retire, seeing the market go up and down gives them the ambiguity of their future. This is a common dilemma among these kinds of stock market investors the fact that the global economy is currently reeling and most analyst are predicting it to sink into a bear market. Because of this, every investor has the right be worried. So the common question is whether to sell stocks now or wait until they go up in value.
Jumping on a guessing game on whether or not to sell stocks is a big no-no. This is not the best way to deal with your apprehensions. The best thing to do is o step back, evaluate your current situation, and devise a comprehensive plan that will outline how you will manage your retirement resources. This way, you will have enough income to sustain your lifestyle after retirement. Make sure to think about how much you will be spending on stocks against other less volatile investment. This is the basic thing to consider when creating a plan. However, it is not the only thing to keep in mind or is the first thing to address.
So for those who are retiring or those who had just retired, here are some basic steps to do…

1. Manage your retirement expenses – How will you do this? The first thing is to identify how much you are going to spend on a monthly or yearly basis. This will help you to come about with a reasonable investing strategy for generating income after retirement. Go get a pen and paper or might as well, for ease, get an interactive budgeting worksheet like Fidelity’s Retirement Income Planner.  When making the plan, be sure to include a cushion for unanticipated expenses as well
   as important ones like healthcare.
2. Tally your income from guaranteed sources – Once you have created a comprehensive plan and you know how much money will be going out, it’s time to check how much from that outflow you can cover from sources other than your savings. For many retirees, the Social Security is likely to give the most of their guaranteed income. If you want to know how much to expect, you can check out Social Security Estimator Tool and provide information like your earnings history and other factors. If you are being issued with a traditional check-a-month company pension then good for you as this can be added in your income.

   In case your income exceeds your expected retirement expense then you are lucky. This means that you can have the freedom of investing conservatively or aggressively whatever you like it. However, some people can have an income gap and in order to fill this gap, they need to greatly depend on draws from their retirement portfolio.

3. Only go for reasonable stocks-bonds allocation – This is the most complicated part because nobody knows what comprises reasonable. But the whole idea is to invest on stocks that will give you advantage at their higher long-term return potential and in bonds that offers the opportunity to get stable income and security. But as mentioned awhile ago, no one can point out what is reasonable. So the best thing to do is to venture on mix 50% stocks and 50% bonds. This could adjust up or down. In case your Social Security covers majority of you living expenses then you might go for stocks. But if you are greatly depending on your savings and you get worried every time that the stock market sags then you might want to dialup the bond portion. You can use the Vanguard’s website that offers a calculator where you can check how long your savings will last with various rates and various blends of stocks and bonds.

   Another good strategy is to put a portion of your savings to annuity as this can give you more assured income and perhaps this can relieve your apprehensions on stock market. But at the end of the day, it is still you who will have the last say on your assets. Though nobody knows where the market is headed to, at least you had devised a plan that will help you survive.

Dont forget to leave a comment with your thoughts.