For people who have reached the end of their working life, whether that is at age 35 or 65, retirement is often harder than it looks.
Investment Matching Apps and Services
One of the biggest burdens of retirement and the largest sources of stress for people is budgeting and investing for the golden years. For people who have never had to invest their money before, whether because they were uncomfortable with the thought of investing, or because their investments had always been taken care of by their employer, there are investment matching apps and services out there to make it all easier.
These work by taking your investor profile, based on the information you enter, and pairing you with retirement-based investment opportunities like gold IRAs and a long list of others.
Stay Plugged Into Your Industry
Talk to any recently retired person, and many who have been retired for years, and you will likely find a significant percentage who miss work. They don’t necessarily want to go back to the daily grind, but, and especially for people who had achieved a lot of recognition and respect throughout their careers, they miss their industry, working with interesting, intelligent people, the stimulation and the challenges.
Thanks to the internet and the variety of applications out there that let you curate your own news feeds, staying plugged into one’s industry has never been easier. Apps like Feedly allow you to create news and information categories and then fill them with publications and news sources relevant to whatever niche or industry you are interested in. Fill yours with cutting edge social media feeds, industry journals, magazines, blogs and other publications to keep on top of the industry you spent your life working in and for.
Online Consultant Networks
As touched on above, finances and having enough money set aside to live the post-retirement life you want to live are the two things that tend to keep most retirees up at night. If people don’t plan appropriately, make unwise investment decisions post-retirement, or suffer from some unforeseen financial catastrophe, they often find themselves needing to return to work.
If you spent a career building valuable skills and knowledge, there is no reason to let them go to waste during your retirement years. There are a variety of online consultancy networks that pair experts with companies in need of consultants. Places like Catalant, EXPERT360, Talmix, SpareHire, Flexy, Mindbench, and Clarity match projects and consultants and can be a great source of income and stimulation for retirees who still have a lot to give.
Automated Savings
This is more for people who are on their way towards retirement, rather than those who are already there, but it is just as pertinent to a successful post-retirement life. A recurring theme throughout this article has been stress and worry regarding savings and budget planning. If you are worried about having enough money to comfortably retire and are unsure whether your current retirement plan contributions are sufficient, automated savings applications can take care of the leg-work for you.
In addition to automating your savings contributions, there are also myriad applications out there to cut out unnecessary or frivolous spending. Planning for your retirement is as much about putting money aside as it is about being wise with your spending.
Conclusion
Retirement is a major life milestone. How you go about planning for it and executing it can make your work-free years the best of your life, or a nightmare. Many of the old safety nets that used to be there for people in advanced countries–generous pensions, adequate social security–are no longer there, so retirees increasingly have to take their fate into their own hands. Luckily, there is technology to make it easier for us.
