Retiring During a Recession
3 Guidelines to Ensure a Stable Future
A few months ago, several news sources confirmed what savvy American businesspeople already suspected: The United States is currently in a recession and has been since February 2020. While a recession isn’t good for anyone, it’s especially concerning for those nearing retirement age. Those who were planning on retiring this year might be having second thoughts — for good reason. Rest assured, however, that if you’ve had fears about retiring this year, you can still go ahead with your plans as long as you keep a few things in mind. Don’t let emotional attachment guide your decisions. Saving for retirement is almost inherently tied with joyful thoughts of financial stability in your golden years. So, when something like a recession threatens that security, it’s easy to react irrationally. Before deciding what to do with your retirement funds, make sure your decisions are rooted in logic, not fear or anxiety. If you don’t know where to start, contact a financial advisor for guidance. Don’t worry about what you can’t control.
on making changes where you have control. You can control where your assets are invested, when you claim Social Security, and how you spend your money, among other things. Think about how you can change these factors in your favor and don’t worry about the rest. Stress-test your finances. While conducting a stress test might sound a little abstract, it’s something that many financial advisors can help you do with your retirement accounts. Stress-testing your finances can help you determine if now is the right time to retire or if it’s better to wait just a little bit longer. Even if things look bad right now, that could change in a year or two. As the market recovers, so do your chances of a peaceful retirement.
Even for financial experts, the markets are notoriously hard to predict. Rather than expend energy wishing you could sway the market, focus
How to Defeat the Ego
AND GET THE MOST OUT OF SELLING YOUR BUSINESS
When you’re the boss, chances are you can be pretty susceptible to your ego. After all, you’re in charge — you didn’t get there without being confident in your decisions and your leadership abilities. However, when you fall prey to your ego, you’ve gone beyond having a reasonable amount of confidence in yourself. In the context of selling your business, it can mean lost money and lost opportunities. Fortunately, you can take a few steps to avoid this pitfall. Be Open to Others’ Ideas The ego blocks our ability to hear sensible options and ideas from other people. If you’re the top dog, you might not be used to hearing out ideas coming from somewhere other than your own head. The problem with that is that even though you’re in charge, you probably aren’t the only one in the room with good ideas. In fact, when you’re working with an expert to sell your business, chances are they’ll have better ideas
than you! Try to hear out other ideas — it could mean making a lot more money down the road. Accept That You’ll Make Mistakes In every new endeavor, making mistakes is a part of learning and growing. When you’re selling your business, it’s no different. More likely than not, it will be different from anything you’ve done before, which means the chances of doing the process perfectly are slim to none. Mistakes can enrage the ego, but accepting that they’ll happen, and that you can learn from them, will help quell exasperation. Don’t Underestimate the Challenges This idea goes hand in hand with accepting your mistakes. The task of selling your business will not be easy, and don’t let your ego tell you any differently. Even if you’ve confidently tackled major financial challenges in the past, going
into the process understanding that it will be difficult — albeit ultimately rewarding — is better. So long as you don’t belittle the task at hand, you can still be confident you will succeed.
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