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From direct communication to adaptability, here are the key qualities to develop.
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Effective retirement planning reaches beyond investments and the numbers related to various accounts a person owns. First, it's about understanding the scope of one's future financial needs and goals. And from that framework, it's about putting all areas of the plan together so that they complement one another and function as an integrated whole.
SEE MORE Find Out in 5 Minutes If You Have Enough to Retire
Sometimes the financial world can seem segmented to clients, with professionals designated as experts in just one area of the plan — investments, insurance, taxes, estate planning, etc. But holistic financial planning includes and ties together every aspect pertinent to the retirement strategy. It analyzes and seeks to optimize each part of a person's plan by making those pieces work together congruently.
One way to think about holistic planning is that most people have several pieces that comprise their retirement puzzle, and they all need to fit together to form a complete picture. But I find when talking about holistic planning in seminars, it's eye-opening for people because they really haven't thought about it in that context. Here are the fundamental elements in most people's retirement situations:
Social SecurityTax planning
Medicare
Investments (401(k) plans, Roth IRAs, nonqualified accounts, etc.)
Income plan (mapping out a strategy for how to use your money)
Estate plan
All those pieces need to function together. You can't maximize your situation if you're looking at each of those aspects in a vacuum.
Putting the pieces together: Starting with Social Security
You have to view Social Security in the context of three of the bullet points mentioned above: investments, income plan and tax planning. You also have to figure out how
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IMAGINE building a small pile of wood and kindling in the smallest room in your house, and setting fire to it. You can keep the door open, to let out some smoke, but cannot switch on an extractor fan. You must tend the fire for an hour. Repeat the process three times a day.
This is how Fatou N'Dour lives. Her kitchen, separate from her home and built of mud bricks, measures roughly two metres by two. She usually cooks indoors because of the winds that whip across Lambayene, the village where she lives in central Senegal. Asked about ventilation, she points to a hole in one wall, which is about ten centimetres square. Other women in the village cook rice, couscous and meaty sauces in similar conditions, using wood from a nearby forest.
Wood and charcoal in Africa; coal in East Asia; wood and animal dung in South Asia—in much of the world, food is heated by burning primitive solid fuels. Each fire is tiny, but the International Energy Agency (IEA), a Paris-based research group,...Continue reading
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