By Grant Lucia
For most people, they spend their entire working lives saving for retirement. And while you might have visions of yourself spending your retirement money to travel the world or to ensure that you’re able to live comfortably in your home and spend as much time with your family and friends as possible, many retirees find that they wind up spending a greater portion of their retirement on some expenses that they hadn’t anticipated.
So to help ensure that you always have the money you need when you’re in retirement, here are three unexpected things you might need to use your retirement funds for to encourage you to save as much as possible for this time.
Major Home Renovations
In an ideal world, every retiree would own their own home outright before they reach retirement. The problem with this is that, even when this does happen, the home that they own might not be one that they are able to safely stay in without making some major renovations for health and safety purposes.
If you own your home but it has steps within it, has small doorways, doesn’t have a security system, has a bathroom that may not be safe for elderly people, and other issues, there’s a good chance that you’ll want to spend money on making renovations to address these issues so that you can safely age in place in your current home.
Needing Long-Term Care Early
Because you can never know how long you’ll be in retirement and what kinds of things you’ll experience while you age, it can be hard to plan financially for some of these unknowns. But one thing you might want to consider as you’re saving for retirement is how you’ll afford things like needing to move into assisted living earlier than you would have thought or having medical issues that quickly become expensive for you.
Both of these things can be very expensive and can last for an unknown amount of time. So if you haven’t saved for these possibilities, you might want to make some changes to how much money you think you should have in your retirement accounts.
Financially Helping Family Members And Friends
Having enough money saved for retirement can become a double-edge sword for some. When your family and friends know that you have a lot of money at the beginning of your retirement, they might be more tempted to ask you for money for certain things. But if this happens often, you could quickly start to see your retirement savings dwindle. So before you agree to help anyone out financially with your retirement funds, you’ll want to make sure that this won’t negatively impact you too much, both now and in the future.
If you want to make sure that you’ll be covered for anything that could happen to you while in retirement, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you prepare for some of the more unexpected things.
