As we approach 2024, it’s time to reflect on our financial journeys and set resolutions that align with our retirement aspirations.
At CKS Summit Group, we believe in the power of proactive planning, especially surrounding your retirement income plan. From implementing a robust investment portfolio to mitigating risk in a volatile economy, here are some key strategies to guide your financial resolutions for a prosperous year ahead.
Reevaluate and Redefine Your Goals
With thanks to stubborn inflation, interest rate hikes, market volatility and other challenges, the fear of running out of money in retirement is a real one for many Americans. Starting off 2024, it’s crucial to revisit and adjust your current retirement income strategies. This process involves a careful analysis of your monthly income, considering both stable (fixed) and fluctuating (variable) components. Alongside, a detailed review of your expenses is key. Break them down into essential costs, such as mortgage or rent, and discretionary expenses like travel and other costly hobbies. This step is vital to understand your spending patterns and identify potential areas for saving.
Understanding and prioritizing your goals is the foundation of a successful retirement plan. This clarity enables you to tailor your financial plan to meet your aspirations, to help ensure that every dollar you earn and spend pushes you closer to achieving your personal and financial milestones.
Leverage Automation for Efficient Financial Management
In the digital age, harnessing the power of automation is a smart underutilized strategy for achieving your financial goals. Automation can play a pivotal role in streamlining your financial management, from debt repayment to enhancing preservation of your principal balance. By setting up automated transactions for recurring financial obligations like credit card bills and savings contributions, you can help create a system that efficiently manages your finances with minimal manual intervention or human error.
However, it’s crucial to periodically review and adjust your automated settings to align with life events, income changes, or shifts in financial goals, helping to ensure that your automated financial strategies stay relevant to your current situation and future objectives.
Long-term Investment Strategies
Balance serves as the ideal goal for long-term investing. Needs change over time, and shortcut strategies that may work one year can prove ineffective, and even costly, the next. Contrary to belief, the enemy of long-term investors isn’t just market volatility – if you’re investing for the long term, the daily or even yearly, ups and downs in the market don’t matter. The real enemy of long-term investors is themselves and the inclination to get in and out of the market.
Investors are more likely to reach their long-term goals if they remain invested and avoid short-term decisions that may take them off course. To avoid making suboptimal decisions when emotions take over, avoid buying out of excitement when the market is going up and sell out of fear when the market is falling. Markets do ultimately normalize, and when they do, those who stay invested may benefit more than those who don’t. Speak with your retirement income advisor before making changes to your portfolio to help ensure you feel okay with how much of your money is invested in high-risk stocks, and make sure it fits with how long you plan to keep your investments.
You also need a logical framework for financial decisions and a plan that anticipates periods of market turbulence.
The Role of a Financial Advisor
A financial advisor can play a pivotal role in guiding you through best practices for the year ahead. At CKS Summit Group, we believe professionally managed tactical stock market and non-stock market portfolios can provide healthy, long-term upside growth potential. It can also be very effective at preserving principal while allowing for a high degree of downside risk protection.
We believe the right mixture of carefully chosen non-stock market and managed market accounts can create a blended portfolio which is capable of producing increasing income, stable growth, preservation of principal, safety and flexibility all at the same time.
As we edge closer to 2024, setting clear, actionable financial resolutions is crucial. While this guide is a starting point, remember that personal financial planning is a journey unique to each individual. Focus on what matters most to you, and let your financial decisions follow suit.
Ready to get 2024 off to a prosperous start? Contact us to explore retirement planning options tailored for 2024 and beyond.
