“Look for the silver lining in any cloud,” they say. “Stay positive,” they advise. “It will all work itself out in the end,” they claim. Though we’re all for optimistic thinking, we wouldn’t be helping our clients much if we kept our heads in those silver-lined clouds, believing in the face of evidence to the contrary, that all will be a rose garden through the rest of their lives. We tend to be somewhat of a pessimistic group when it comes to financial planning and preparing for retirement. As we should be. Because if you have plans to retire at all, we have to look for the storms within those clouds and do our best to help you avoid them. When it comes to retirement planning, ditching the optimistic cliche’s and getting down to brass tax will actually help you maintain your financial picture for a lifetime – silver linings and all. Our pessimistic views on planning for retirement include:

• The thought that you haven’t saved quite enough. Each and every single one of us should have started saving earlier. But we didn’t, so it’s imperative that we play catch up and save as much as we can, in any way that we can.
• The thought that you can’t afford high risks. As you age, protecting your portfolio takes on more urgency. Though that investment looks promising it may also be fraught with risk. Older investors simply don’t have the time to recover from the potential loss that comes with those risky ventures. Make sure to get educated and experienced financial advice in order to build your portfolio intelligently.
• The thought that nobody has your back. The days where the majority of us could rely on employer-sponsored retirement plans seem to be long gone. By understanding that your retirement plan is completely and utterly up to you removes the optimistic view that somebody will be there to bail you out.
• The thought that you are going to get sick. It’s a simple fact of old age that we can expect to become ill. In fact, the single biggest expense that burdens retirees is that of health care. Make sure that you’ve built those added expenses, with inflation in mind, into your retirement plan.