Somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 baby boomers reach retirement age every day. This can be a scary and exciting time for older generations who are finally confident enough in their finances to leave the workforce. However, your clients likely have families and children that need to be taken into consideration as they exit the workforce.
Oftentimes, the decisions parents make in their own planning can affect how their children (your clients) must plan for their own finances. We talked about caring for parents in retirement, today we’ll show you how to help them plan for retirement so that your clients do not end up shouldering the majority of their parent’s out-of-pocket care costs.
Whether your clients are intimately involved with their parent’s planning process, or more on the sidelines, it’s important to make sure that all parties are taking into consideration the opportunities and risks that will come with retirement.
Considerations for Parent’s’ Retirement Planning
It’s important that your clients and their parents have a plan in place for major financial decisions and that their personal information, things such as Social Security and bank account numbers, are protected. Helping them navigate technology and making sure that they have a way to easily contact a trusted party (such as their clients) to ask for help might seem like a small thing, but it might save both of them a lot of money, and headache in the long-run.
Getting a grasp on monthly expenditures will be is critical in helping them figure out their best plan for retirement. Things like housing costs, caregiving and medical costs, and fixed expenses need to be planned and documented for parents and how it will affect their children.
Retiring parents might also not be aware of the benefits or opportunities that are available to them now that they are retired. Government programs and senior discounts can help ease the burden of fixed incomes and make their dollars stretch further. If your clients children are involved in any of the planning aspects for retirement, make sure that they are both on the lookout for these types of benefits.
Most importantly, you need to simply have a conversation with your clients about their plan and how it affects their children. You may or may not need to be involved with the process, but having another party there can help make sure that the parents can enjoy their retirement and that the children can have peace-of-mind that they will not need to bear the burden of their parent’s out-of-pocket care costs.