Working towards retirement is deciding in advance all aspects of your life after paid work ends. This include lifestyle choices such as how to spend time in retirement, where to live, when to completely quit working, your finances etc.  Common reasons people fail to achieve retirement goals include procrastination, overspending. dipping into retirement funds prematurely, and relying solely on savings. Above all, the biggest obstacle to working class folks successfully retiring is procrastination.  

When retirement plans work, i.e. creating a lifestyle one can afford when paid work ends, it’s usually because the individual’s strategy to achieve the retirement goal is clear. The clearer an individual is about his retirement goals, the more enthusiastic he/she becomes towards the achievement of this objective. In my opinion, successfully achieving retirement involves understanding life cycles and accepting the limitations and opportunities that each cycle of life presents. For instance, individuals that fall within the young adult to early career stages (see image below) may not have a lot of money free to invest, but what they do have is time to let investments mature, which is a critical and valuable piece of saving for retirement.  On the other hand, those in the Midlife (50-65) stage tend to become more conservative.

                 Useful tips for working towards a successful retirement

1. Make the consequences of not working towards retirement real. Imagine being a 60 year old person with no savings to fall back on? Think of the strain it will put on your relationships. Answer questions that will make you think deeper about retirement, such as: When you are in your 60s, what do you want to say when you look back at your life? What will you regret not being able to do when you’re older? When you’re 60 and you look back on your life, what would matter the most? What would you like to leave behind for your loved ones after a life of hard work?
2. Picking the right  strategy to achieve your investment goals. to achieve this takes a little self knowledge. Start by identifying your risk appetite (risk tolerance)
3. Save regularly. Pick a saving and investing style that matches your personality. Also, break down your overall savings target into monthly, quarterly and yearly milestones. Record your consumption spending for 3 months and see if the way you spending your money makes you happy
4. Use The Rule of 20:  to identify how much you need to have saved by retirement, multiply your current annual income by 20. ( e.g ₦5 million annual income would need to have ₦100 million saved by retirement age)
5. Be accountable to someone. You achieve this by simply surrounding yourself with people who take retirement seriously
6. Do not rely solely on your pensions. Embrace risk and invest for the long term
7. Educate yourself. It’s a long journey and the better educated one is, the less mistakes one will make. Read “Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes‑And How to Correct Them “  by Gary Belsky and Thomas Gilovich
8. Understand inflation. Your money depends on it
9. Work with financial advisors to build a diversified plan for the long term.
10. Use a retirement calculator to get started . Here’s one courtesy ARM pensions
11. Utilise visual tools, scoreboards, and apps to track your progress towards a successful retirement. I use this one
12. And last but not least,  actually retire! Make space for new blood in the workforce. Plan for other fulfilling ways to thrive.

To wrap it all up, let me conclude with the words of Brandon ( a blogger and software engineer who retired at 34). “ A mistake a huge number of people make is I don’t think they really know how much money they spend on stuff that probably doesn’t make them happy. You don’t have to dedicate your whole life to budgeting or anything, but set up Mint or Personal Capital ( or any money money management app. I use this one), look through it all, and try to figure out how much of that money is going to your happiness” . Read his story here.