By Amanda Weiss
Thinking about retirement can be concerning, especially from a financial standpoint. Many retired people don’t have a large steady income, if any at all. Therefore, it can be daunting to find ways to save enough beforehand to have a comfortable retirement. Luckily, with enough strategy and early planning, you can enter retirement without too much worry. In fact, you may even find that retiring early is a viable option for you. Either way, if you take steps to secure your savings now, you will thank yourself later. For some ideas to implement in your life, here are 9 moves to boost retirement or even retire early!
1) Pay Off Your Mortgage Before Retiring
One common source of significant debt is your mortgage. Since housing can be extremely expensive, most people take many years to fully pay off the purchase costs. But doing so before you retire will help you in your retirement. Since you may only make a steady income while you work, paying off a mortgage while retired can eat into your savings. If you are subsisting mainly on those savings, this could be a concern for you. You can try to alleviate this worry by reducing the length of your mortgage by several years. Your monthly payments may go up slightly, but you can probably make some budget adjustments to make this feasible. If you have not yet bought a house, you will want to factor in mortgage length, and look at pricing accordingly. Overall, to reduce future stress, try to pay off your mortgage earlier.
2) Put Your Savings in a Roth IRA
There are several different types of accounts you may use to save up for retirement. And while planning, you may have gotten a regular IRA because of the contribution tax deduction. But even though this immediate benefit may appeal to you, you have better long-term options. If you use a Roth IRA instead, the interest you receive on your contributions will be tax-exempt. Additionally, regular IRAs mandate that you take out some of the money each year once you hit a certain age. Roth IRAs do not, so your money can continue to accumulate interest even through your retirement years. Luckily, if you have a regular IRA, you don’t have to cancel it and start a new account from scratch. Instead, you can transfer your money to a Roth, pay the taxes on it once, and watch your savings grow.