To paraphrase Marty McFly, who time-traveled between the 1950s and the 21st century in a souped-up Delorean sports car, the key to a successful retirement is to plan “back from the future.”
Actually, Marty didn’t concern himself with retirement. But imagine how the rest of us could improve our retirement planning if we had a glimpse of what will really happen 20 or 30 years from now. We would know exactly how to invest our savings, what the cost of living or market returns will be, and what happens to our health, our kids and grandkids.
Alas, to quote another great mind, physicist and philosopher Niels Bohr, who won a Nobel Prize, “Forecasting is particularly difficult, especially concerning the future.”
That leaves us only with planning from the present.
Even as we all hope to live long and healthy lives, you’ll be a better planner if you anticipate what might go wrong in retirement. I said in the first part of this blog that I would tell you how and when to plan for the basic retirement objectives that will bring a bright retirement future. I call them the Three Ls: lifetime income, liquidity and legacy.
