Courtesy Edward Jones Financial
By Rob Snell
You might work diligently at building a financial road map for your retirement years and a comprehensive estate plan. But you can’t just create these strategies, you also have to communicate them.
Specifically, you need to inform your spouse and your grown children what you have in mind for the future, because the more they know, the fewer the surprises that await them down the road.
Let’s start with your spouse. Ideally, of course, you and your spouse should have already communicated about your respective ideas for retirement and have come to an agreement on the big issues, such as when you both plan to retire, where you’ll live during retirement, and what you want to do as retirees (volunteer, travel, work part time and so on).
But what you both might have let slip through the cracks are the important specifics related to financing your retirement. You’ll need to answer several questions, including these:
• When will you each start taking Social Security?
• Are there strategies for maximizing both of your Social Security payments?