After a working lifetime of alarm clocks and meetings, you might be looking forward to a lot more unstructured time once you retire. But taking care of one more to-do list early on can set you up for a better retirement.
The following assumes you’ve already done some basic financial planning. Ideally, before you retire, you’ll create a budget, decide when to claim Social Security, settle on a sustainable withdrawal rate from your retirement funds and figure out how you’ll cover health care expenses. If any of those topics are still a mystery, consider talking to a fee-only financial advisor. If money’s tight, you may qualify for free or low cost consultations through the Foundation for Financial Planning, National Association of Personal Financial Advisors or the Association for Financial Counseling & Planning Education, among other organizations.
