Turning 60 with only $2,000 saved for retirement can produce an uncomfortable realization: there probably isn’t enough time left for decades of compounding to solve the problem. But that doesn’t mean the next five, seven, or 10 years are financially meaningless. At this stage, retirement planning at 60 becomes less about reaching an arbitrary million-dollar target and more about improving several variables at once. It involves savings, Social Security, debt, housing costs, work, and the date you actually retire. Even relatively modest changes can improve the monthly budget you’ll eventually have to live on. The first step is replacing the frightening question “Have I saved enough?” with the much more useful question “What can I still change?”
