How Do I Know If I Have Enough to Retire?

As you prepare for retirement, you may be asking yourself if you have enough to retire.

It’s really important to look at your spending patterns. You don’t want to test your retirement spending plan your first month of retirement. You want to know ahead of time how much you’re going to spend and how much you’re going to earn each month. So look closely at how much you spend, and test your retirement spending plan.

Now, the areas that you’re going to want to look at are the Social Security benefits that you’re going to receive in retirement, any sort of pensions, or anything else that’s going to pay you a stream of income. Any gaps that you may have between those streams of income and the total amount that you plan on living on is going to have to be made up by your portfolio.

So you’d want to talk to a qualified expert—a CFP® professional, a fiduciary—in order to figure out if your portfolio is large enough to sustain any shortfalls between the cash flow from those first sources I mentioned and your full spending plan.

Parkshore Wealth Management is a family-owned, independent, fee-only Registered Investment Advisor serving the greater Sacramento area with an office in Roseville, CA. We partner with financially responsible individuals and families who are eager to take positive steps that will allow them to use their money to build the life they desire. The firm is led by Harold Anderson, CFP®, and Daniel Andersen, CFP®, both members of NAPFA, the country's leading professional association of fee-only financial advisors.