He had invested his small capital in safe stocks.He gave money to the poor.He also gave money to various school funds and also to the Brookfield mission.
You just turned 66, had a blast at the office party in your honor, said goodbye to the water-cooler crowd and are heading toward that great unknown called retirement. But now you’ve got a bad case of the willies. You’re wondering whether your money will last as long as you do. After all, you don’t want to run so low on cash that you’re forced to pin on a name tag and call out “Welcome to Walmart” a decade from now.
So how do you approach your portfolio now that you’re no longer collecting a paycheck? When it comes to investing in retirement, experts say there is one guiding principle: You can’t earn back your nest egg without a steady paycheck. So you’d better make sure you’re investing wisely and safely. “When you are still working and the investment markets don’t do what you hope they will, you always have the option of working longer and postponing retirement,” says Anthony Webb, senior economist at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. “Once you have retired, you have lost that margin of adjustment.”
To be sure, unless you retired on the spur of the moment or grossly neglected your investments, you shouldn’t have to revamp your portfolio drastically. Say you plan to withdraw 4% of your total assets in the first year of retirement and to adjust the amount by the rate of inflation in the following years. Such a withdrawal rate is unlikely to deplete your savings over a 30-year retirement. All you need to do is review your investments and determine whether your portfolio properly balances your need for safety, growth and income in a way that will keep you both physically and emotionally comfortable.