3 Tricks to Help Retirees Spend More, Ep #306

If you have diligently saved throughout your career, you may be ready to retire, yet still feel uncertain about spending your savings.

To truly live your best life in retirement you need to learn how to shift from a saving mindset to a spending mindset. In this episode of Retirement Starts Today, we’ll help you do just that.

This is the podcast where you can learn how to spend more money and pay less taxes on your way to an even better retirement. Listen in to learn how you can start spending more money so that you can enjoy your best retirement.

Listen in to learn how you can start spending more money so that you can enjoy your best retirement. Click To Tweet

Outline of This Episode

[2:52] 3 techniques retirees can use to spend more money confidently
[6:30] Techniques #2 and 3
[12:24] Can my wife receive a spousal benefit before I receive my Social Security benefit?

Try a partial retirement

Many individuals who are financially ready for retirement still harbor doubts about whether their retirement savings will see them through and allow them to enjoy an amazing retirement.

Fortunately, Jamie Hopkins from ThinkAdvisor.com shares three ways that you can become comfortable with your current financial situation so that you can increase your spending and enjoy retirement without worry.

The first technique involves testing your spending habits by utilizing a partial retirement strategy. This involves working part-time while supplementing income with retirement withdrawals. By doing so, you can become familiar with your spending patterns without seeing your retirement account balance diminish significantly.

I’ve used this technique with clients before. This helps them get used to their projected spending as well as the idea of living on monthly payments.

Become familiar with your spending patterns without seeing your retirement account balance diminish significantly. Click To Tweet

Define your needs, wants, and wishes

The second technique differentiates between your needs, wants, and wishes. By categorizing your spending in these three areas you can understand how much you will need to spend each month to ensure your needs are met. Then you can add in your wants and wishes as you see fit.

Drop the success or failure criteria

The third technique entails stepping away from success or failure metrics. This can help you understand the importance of guaranteed income sources like Social Security or annuities. This will also help you to understand that retirement is not a binary outcome. Minor adjustments can lead to successful outcomes even in seemingly failing scenarios.

Minor adjustments can lead to successful outcomes. Click To Tweet

What you can do to take action

It is important to understand that nothing can guarantee a successful outcome since there are so many uncertainties that come with retirement. Risk is normal and is simply a part of the retirement journey.

Test your projected spending habits while working part-time to experience a bit of retirement. This will help you to adjust to your new financial reality while giving you the opportunity to fine-tune your spending patterns with the relative safety of having a part-time income.