Determining your retirement income needs is a process that helps you identify your retirement planning needs based on your desired standard of living and the resources you’ll have available. Today, you can typically no longer rely on Social Security benefits and a company pension check to fulfill all your retirement income needs. Social Security benefits will probably satisfy only a fraction of your overall retirement income needs, and generous company pensions have largely been replaced in many cases with employer-sponsored retirement plans that are funded largely with employee dollars.
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Posted by Michael Chapman at 12:00 PM UTC
Qualified employer-sponsored retirement plans can provide a number of tax and nontax benefits to employees. The employee perspective on these plans should certainly consider the obvious tax deferral and retirement savings benefits. Additionally, however, employees should consider various strategies to optimize their benefits. For example, employees will approach their retirement plans most effectively when they take full advantage of employer-matched savings and by remaining with a particular company at least until vesting has occurred. In some cases, moreover, the advantages and disadvantages of borrowing from employer-sponsored plans should be evaluated.
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Posted by Michael Chapman at 12:00 PM UTC
