Retirement Plan Therapy A different perspective on handling the effects of the market crash. Have your retirement preparations been set back recently? Did the market crash deal them a knockout punch? Do you know where you stand? What should you do now to recover? The first thing to do is to take a deep breath and recognize that the financial world has changed. In every change there is potential opportunity. You can resolve to work with the new environment and develop a new, better and stronger plan for your future.

What is a good retirement plan?

It is important to recognize what a retirement plan is and what it is not.  A good retirement plan identifies your goals, estimates what your living expenses will need to be to reach the goals, identifies what financial resources will be needed to support your retirement lifestyle, and determines what actions you should take, and what adjustments you should make, to make sure that your financial resources are expected to last for your lifetime.

Hope that the market will recover is not a plan. A retirement plan is not a 401(k) or IRA. It is not an annuity, nor is it a pension or life insurance policy. These are financial resources that may support your retirement plan, but they are not a plan.

 What should be done now

If you have developed a plan in the past and it was prescient enough and sufficiently robust to accommodate the recent stock market plunge, you should stay on your course with a sense of relief.

If your plan did not anticipate the effects of the market crash and you have not yet entered retirement, you can be glad that the inevitable bear market occurred while you still have a chance to make corrections, rather than later when your options will be more limited. It is suggested that you thoroughly re-open and review your plans to determine what changes must be made to reflect your current financial resources.

If you are in retirement already. It would be wise to review your resources and life style to make sure that you know if changes are necessary.

If you are approaching retirement and have accumulated some financial assets  but do not have a  plan that you can trust, it would be wise to lay out a detailed  approach as early as you can. The younger you are, the more time you will have to accumulate the resources you need. If you have a clear plan, you are less likely to make the mistake of buying some financial product that you do not need.

If you need to build or review your plan, we have included a section on this site that discusses the essentials of retirement planning. You can use this information to see whether your plan has the basic issues covered, and what to expect to be considered in your plan if you engage a financial planner to help you. If you decide to use a planner’s services we suggest you seek a Certified Financial Planner ^TM who acts as a fiduciary like LFM&P, does not sell financial products, and does not accept commissions.