Contributed by: Kali Hassinger, CFP®, CDFA®
No you didn’t read that title incorrectly. After decades of consistent and focused saving, how do you change your mentality to feel comfortable spending what you’ve worked so hard to accumulate? Good savers spend decades developing the discipline to save, plan, and minimize debt, all for the ultimate goal of reaching financial independence and freedom. However, when it comes time to use those hard-earned funds to support your retirement lifestyle, it can be a difficult transition.
The Center defines financial planning as a coordinated and comprehensive approach to reaching your financial goals. It necessitates an appropriate balance between spending now and investing for the future. That is a difficult balance to maintain, and without truly understanding your current resources and future needs, it is easy to miss the mark. Without professional analysis and review, many either spend too much now and jeopardize future goals or have save too aggressively and end up unnecessarily sacrificing current quality of life.
In planning, we can quantify what it takes to meet future financial goals, and make sure that we are doing what is needed to help reach those objectives. In some cases, that knowledge can provide the freedom to actually reduce savings. Beyond just allowing increased spending, this can also provide the opportunity to pursue passions as opposed to income.
When finally reaching that retirement finish line, however, turning your savings into income can be a daunting task. Pulling from a balance that you’ve worked years to accumulate and build up can be uncomfortable, especially if you don’t know how much you can safely withdrawal without jeopardizing your long term financial security. If you’re like many of our clients, it isn’t uncommon to react to this discomfort by under-spending and unintentionally accumulating money throughout retirement.
Life is all about balance. In this example, it’s about protecting your financial future while also enjoying life now. If you’re in the enviable position of having more than you need for retirement, making a meaningful plan for the excess can help to ease the reluctance to spend. Whether it is gifting, creating a financial legacy, or granting yourself permission to indulge a bit, if it brings you joy, it is worth considering. Of course we would not recommend spending money frivolously, but, the ultimate goal is to pursue areas of interest because they are meaningful and important to you - unconstrained by financial concerns. Isn’t that true financial freedom?
Kali Hassinger, CFP®, CDFA®, is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional at Center for Financial Planning, Inc.® She has more than a decade of financial planning and insurance industry experience.
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