Best Investments For Retirement Planning

People invest for many reasons. As a hobby, for their ego’s sake or to meet a medium-term goal, such as paying for college.

All are reasonable choices, as far as that goes. Investing as a form of entertainment is no sin. Certainly CNBC would cease to exist, otherwise.

But most of us have a real, long-term goal. However you choose to express it, retirement, your golden years, the day you stop working — it’s all about living off your money rather than continuing to work solely to make more.

The distinction is important. You might choose to work in order to stay active. But the goal here is to make work a true choice, not a necessity.

Retirement planning as a concept has a lot of moving parts. Insurance, living arrangements, health care and travel budgeting. Taxes are a surprisingly big issue, as many new retirees soon learn.

But what about investing? Here are some basic guidelines for retirement planning investments:

1. Get off the roller coaster

Stock investing is a big part of your portfolio in the early working years. It won’t disappear from your investment palette (see No. 5 below), but it should shrink in importance.

Consider the experience of would-be retirees who were long equities in 2007. Anyone planning to quit work that year likely put it off, maybe up to five years. A down market might change your life.

2. Find passive income

You will have access, mostly likely, to a base income from Social Security. Some folks will have a pension to fall back on for the difference.

The rest of us will need to own investments that pay a steady stream of cash, such as dividend stocks, bonds and real estate funds. That’s likely to be a big change in your way of thinking about investing.

3. Avoid fad investing

Every five to seven years, the stock market takes a deep dive. That is the recent experience, in any case. Usually, that dive is related to a single investment type that a mass of investors decides is going to be their salvation.

Dot-com stocks, housing, lately gold. Do not follow the pack, ever, and especially not with retirement savings.

4. Be tax efficient

Often, retirees underestimate how much they will pay in taxes in retirement. They assume real estate taxes will continue, but also you will pay taxes on Social Security income and on income from investments, even from your IRA and 401(k) holdings.

It pays to think ahead. One way to lower your taxes in retirement is to put off taking your Social Security income until later (when it will also pay you more as well). Another is to take advantage of Roth IRA conversions while you work.

5. Think long-term, still

You might be retired a long time, perhaps 20 or even 30 years. To keep ahead of inflation, it pays to consider owning stocks in some measure, even late in the game.

Retirement planning and investing are not mutually exclusive activities. They need to work together. Using a well-balanced portfolio, it can be done.