There’s a reason most retirement planning calculators are grossly inaccurate. They assume affording retirement is nothing more than a math game. Factor in this or that, then put X% away every year and you’re golden.
Not.
Retirement planning is way more complicated than even the fanciest calculators can predict. They’re all about the numbers, and fail to account for the fact that money’s not the only thing you need to achieve and maintain financial security throughout retirement.
Non-financial Liabilities Are What’s Really Holding You Back.
Non-financial liabilities are issues you’ve developed throughout your life and career as a corporate worker that make it phenomenally difficult to succeed at retirement planning. Most of us don’t think about them (I certainly didn’t in the past) and retirement calculators definitely don’t take them into account.
And the real kicker is, the more successful and comfortable your corporate life has been, the more likely it is you have non-financial liabilities to shake off.
Here are a couple of the many non-financial liabilities you should ponder:
Poor Health
High levels of stress come with the corporate environment. And years of stress can lead to other destructive behaviors or ailments that can cost you a lot of money later in life. It makes predicting how much money you’ll need for healthcare in retirement nearly impossible.
A Sense of Entitlement
You and your family have gotten used to a certain way of living. Your standards go ever upward over time. If these expectations don’t diminish in the years leading up to and during retirement, there’s no possible way to get yourself in a financially safe position.
Can You Start to Think of Others?
If you allow your retirement planning to be nothing more than a numbers game, you’re creating way more risk for yourself and your family 5, 10, 20, 30 years down the road into retirement. Life happens, even after you stop working, and you need to do your best to mitigate these issues and be psychologically prepared to tackle them. You need to change your mindset and address all the factors that hinder your ability to retire successfully.
In the No Nest Egg Retirement Plan, you can learn more about the different kinds of non-financial liabilities that affect retirement success and how to minimize their impact.