Now that you're not counting on a paycheck, it's even more important to balance income and expenses as a primary focus of wealth planning.
Manage your cash flow
Pay close attention to your cash flow in retirement: Budget carefully, monitor income and expenses frequently, and take action whenever you see significant changes in income and expenses.
There are two basic tools to monitor and manage cash flow:
- A monthly budget providing itemized breakdowns of income and expenses
- An up-to-date net-worth statement
Review your budget monthly: Maintain itemized breakdowns of your income and expenses.
Review your net worth statement periodically: Get a snapshot of your assets, debt and cash reserves.
Read the news: Keep tabs on interest rates, market performance and inflation.
Read:
Use the Net Worth Estimator™
Consolidate your accounts
Keep things simple
Use a simple system for documentation and filing so you don't spend a lot of time keeping your records up to date, and so you can find financial documentation when you need it.
Wealth management software could help you save time reviewing your monthly budget. You enter your expenses into simulated check registers, where you assign each expense to a budget category. You can create monthly or annual budget reports that automatically update each time you log in money spent or received.
Wealth management
software could help you
save time reviewing
your monthly
budget.