HINDSIGHT IS 20/20

Mark Matthews, an Advisor at Edward Jones tells us how those who work in his field have learned their own lessons about saving for retirement.

We will have c1 you've spent years preparing for retirement and now you're in the home stretch.

Are you ready?

Here's mark matthews.

I guess my question for you, what are the three things that investors are saying i wish i would have known that?

That's a great question and one of the things that over the years and i have spoken with people and helped them prepare to retire is to think about how they will spend their time.

Do they have hobbies?

Do they have volunteer interests?

Is it family and grand kids?

Sometimes they know what they want to do and sometimes they're not sure.

It takes a while to find things to fill your time that aren't just boring.

And so, it's something to think about before you get to that point.

That's interesting because you know middle aged people should be thinking about that too.

You know how hard do we want to work now so we can play later?

That's correct.

Yeah, how hard and one thing that people may think about is i want to retire tomorrow.

Sometimes that's not feasible.

They need to think about when they do want to retire and i read where three fourths of people have not done work to figure out what kind of income they will need if they retire at a certain age.

It's certainly beneficial to think about the things ahead of time.

Now what do i do?

That's not a good plan.

One of the other questions is about healthcare which is interesting because i don't think people realize when you stop working, there's a possibility your healthcare could end.

What i find, medicare takes care of some things but not everywhere.

There's deductibles and copays.

Long-term care to deal with for many people.

There's different insurance mechanisms to deal with those thing.

Medicare won't pay for everything and the real challenge is for folks that retire or leave their employer before they are 65 years of age, they don't have medicare.

Bridging the gap between 61 or 62, 65 could be very expensive if you're spouse isn't working and doesn't have insurance for you.

You have to fund it yourself or get it through the exchange.

And that can mess up the retirement plan pretty quick.

That makes since.

I know one of the these last things that you guys would suggest would be to discuss your vision for retirement a little earlier.

Do you mean by that, make a vision board?

That would be a good idea.

Have an idea you talk about with your advisors, family members.

What do you want to do, not just what kind of income but what do you want to do about the next stage of your lives?

And prepare yourself and prepare things around you to be ready to do that versus to just shoot from the hip when you pop out of the work for the last time and wonder what you will do next.

That's no fun either.

But, to have a vision of i want to be able to travel a little bit each year.

Maybe i have family that lives across the country and i want to be able to afford to travel to see them at my leisure and stay there a couple weeks.

That type of things.

That's what i want to see people do.

The sooner you plan ahead, the more likely you will be able to achieve it.

Wonderful.

Mark matthews, thanks for being with us today.

Thanks jodie.