Planning for retirement isn’t easy, especially in the current economy. That doesn’t make it any less important though. The sooner you start investing in your retirement, the easier it is to fund. It all starts with deciding how you want to fund your retirement. There are a few options that most people turn to to accomplish this.

Stocks

The New York Stock Exchange started in 1792. Since then, people have been buying and selling stocks, using them as an investment vehicle to build wealth. That wealth easily translates to funds that can be used in retirement. 

If you choose to invest in stocks to fund your retirement, remember to pay attention to stocks that offer good dividends. Specifically, check the dividend history of the stocks you’re considering. That will give you an idea of how you can expect the dividends to trend in the future.

Real Estate

Real estate is another excellent option for building wealth that you can set aside for retirement. Arguably the best way to generate income from real estate is to buy properties and rent them to tenants. While that can provide a steady stream of income, it’s not without its drawbacks. 

Real estate is more involved than stocks because you may have to deal with bad tenants. Bad tenants can ruin your property, which is why it’s so important to carefully screen any prospective tenants and do your part to be a good landlord. It’s not for everyone, but it can generate decent income well into your retirement years.

Social Security Benefits

The whole point of social security is to help Americans set aside money they can use to fund their retirement. Whether it’s a viable system or not is up for debate, but that’s how it’s meant to work. Expect social security to cover about 45% of your pretax, preretirement income. That means that you can’t rely on social security to fully fund your retirement, but it can cover a good chunk of it. Considering how much you should have set aside to comfortably retire, having that much of it already taken care of can be a major relief.

As a general rule, you should have about 10 times your annual income set aside when you retire. Assuming your expenses stay about the same, that should last you about 10 years comfortably if you don’t have any other funds coming in. It takes time to accumulate that sort of wealth. Get yourself off to a good start by coming up with a good plan for funding your retirement and getting started as soon as you can.

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