Empty Nest Investing

If your kids are grown and have grabbed control of their financial lives, now is a good time to refocus on your financial prospects and strategies for achieving your goals. Pay attention to the areas that can most affect your retirement readiness:

Communications

Reassessing your retirement strategy begins with communication. Talk with a loved one about retirement expectations, from travel and housing to your expected standard of living and retirement dates. It’s possible your shared goals have changed over the years.

Estimate how much you’ll need, and work with a financial professional to learn how to increase your retirement contributions, reduce debt and create an asset mix that meets your risk tolerance and timeframe. Use the extra money an empty nest may bring to help increase your retirement savings.

Strategy

Increasing qualified retirement contributions should be one of your goals once you get to this point. Start with qualified plans you may already contribute to, such as a 401(k) plan or traditional IRA.

These two vehicles, along with SIMPLE and Simplified Employee Pension (SEP) plans if you own a business, offer tax-deductible contributions, although the traditional IRA has income limits to qualify. You pay ordinary income tax on eventual distributions from these vehicles, but qualified distributions from a Roth 401(k) and Roth IRA are generally tax-free.*

If you have a Health Savings Account, increase your contributions there, too. Healthcare costs are typically a top expense in retirement, which a triple tax-free HSA can help alleviate. An HSA features tax-deductible contributions, tax-deferred potential growth and tax-free qualified withdrawals. Your financial professional can help determine if an HSA is right for you.

Vigilance

Life doesn’t always happen according to plan, so it’s important to keep an eye out on how changes might affect your goals and retirement. Change means you may need to adjust your contributions, retirement age or retirement expectations over time. One advantage of age? You get to contribute an extra $6,000 to a 401(k) and an extra $1,000 to an IRA beginning at age 50.

As you near retirement, pay close attention to your portfolio mix to ensure it has the combination of safety and growth you’ll need. Change will happen, and staying flexible can help you to adapt.

*Withdrawals/distributions from your IRA/401(K) accounts will be included in as part of your taxable income and may be subject to a 10% additional tax penalty if you’re under age 59 1/2.