Tips to chase your big retirement goals.

The lifestyle of present retirees is immensely different from what it was before. Today’s self-motivated retirees lead a dynamic life, invest time in friends and family, travel around the world, play sports, start new business and volunteer. Whatever sentiment retirement arouses in you, with little planning from your working days, your retirement life can be precisely what you envision.

• Owning and Living in Your Own Home

  One of the ultimate goals of many is to own their own home in retirement. Everyone wants to live that moment when they would walk through the doors of their new home, drop down on the couch, and breathe a sigh of relief thinking, "Finally, it's mine!" The joy of looking at all your stuff, rolling your eyes about how much you shopped, and taking a moment to nap because you worked hard to get here, is incomparable.

• Knocking Off the Bucket List

  Make your bucket list the ultimate celebration of ageing. Be heartier, healthier, travel place and spend your golden years chasing once-in-a-lifetime adventures, like, hiking the Great Wall of China, skydiving from 12,000 feet, swimming with sharks or skiing the snow-clad mountains.

• Taking Up a Sport

  If you didn’t have the time to practice a sport during your working years, no worries, your retirement could just be the right time. Though you may feel at a disadvantage trying to learn something that others have spent years perfecting, that shouldn’t stop you. When you come to sports later in life, you get great pleasure and benefits, like fitness from your new activity, whether it is tennis, biking, boating, or water aerobics. If you want to take up a difficult sport like tennis or golf, you could take lessons.

• Starting Your Own Business

  If you have always had an idea for a product or service, your retirement is an ideal opportunity to test it out. Accomplish something you like, be careful investing excessively of your capital, and attempt to get a word of wisdom from somebody whose business judgment you trust.

How Close Are You to Your Retirement Goals?

You can’t just say, “I will travel places in retirement” and hope for the best, you need to think about how much it might cost. For example, if you are interested in taking up new sports and hobbies, you will likely require less income after retirement than someone who would like to step foot on every continent or see every Wonder of the world

Therefore, setting up a saving and investing goal linked to your income is vital to simplify your retirement planning, and help determine if you are on track throughout your working life.

Firstly, start estimating how much you will need to lead a peaceful retirement life. To do that, visualise yourself in retirement and categorise your anticipated expenses into “needs,” “wants” and “wishes.”Your needs should include your day-to-day expenditures for food, shelter and healthcare. Also, don’t forget to consider outstanding debts if any. Your wants and wishes should consist of your goals. So, start estimating how much each goal will cost. For instance,

• • Buying a house in a metro city: Average 2 crores
• • Going on a holiday with your partner each year: Average 2 lakhs, may increase or decrease based on the location
• • Starting a business: 5 lakhs to 50 lakhs or even more

Once you estimate the cost mentioned above and arrive at a retirement corpus, decide where to invest to achieve the desired corpus.

Choose Your Investments Wisely

While planning for retirement, the simple answer is to save more and invest for growth through a diversified mix of investments. Of course, stocks, mutual funds come with more ups and downs than fixed deposits or bonds, so you should be comfortable with those risks. Another investment option that can help in building up a retirement fund through its manifold features is Unit Linked Insurance Plan (ULIP).

A Unit Linked Insurance Plan is a market-linked investment where the premiums are invested in a fund of your choice. ulip provides numerous features like switching option which allows switching between equity, debt and balanced funds, top-ups which permit additional premiums to be invested in the ULIP, partial withdrawals wherein money can be withdrawn from the plan among others.It pays a maturity benefit,and in addition, a death benefit as life insurance cover is provided with a ulip

Finally, get in the habit of upping your investments consistently, either at the end of each year or whenever you get a raise and review your investments regularly.