Baby Boomers Retirement Guide: 9 Steps to Passive Retirement Income

By Dale Bundy and Raymond Aaron

Do you plan on retiring soon? Are you still working, but think saving for retirement is impossible? Struggling to pay the bills on a monthly basis and not saving for an emergency? If this applies to you, then you need the Baby Boomers Retirement Guide. From the reasons why you are feeling the financial crunch to the realities of retirement, this book covers it all.
Dale Bundy, former corporate controller, takes you through the reality of retiring in today’s financial climate, sharing his story of trying to make his retirement savings stretch. His experiences are woven through this guide that gives you an action plan to build your retirement savings or even give yourself a new income source right now!
His experience in both the corporate world and the retirement world gives him the unique position to guide you through this transition. He tells it like it is, discussing why retirement might seem out of reach for a vast majority of working adults. Dale dives into the struggles that today’s working class has as they live paycheck to paycheck.
He explores life stages, the stages of retirement and even why today’s families are feeling the financial pinch, even those that might be considered high earners. Explore how these factors might be impacting you and your family, but also how to take steps to change those factors in your own life!
While geared to Baby Boomers, this guide also provides advice that can assist those just starting out in the workforce or those that are at the highest earning point of their careers. Wherever you are in life, the Baby Boomers Retirement Guide can assist you to move in a new financial direction.
No matter your current financial situation, the Baby Boomers Retirement Guide can help you to make better financial choices that can let you lead the life you want now and into retirement!

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jul 4, 2016
• ISBN: 9781772770780

Book preview

MOBE

Chapter 1 – Introduction

Brief History On Me

I retired in 2008, after a very successful business career as VP-Controller in several different industries. One of my major achievements was always looking to improve the process, whether it was in my own financial-related departments or others within the organization. Upon retirement, I had one major challenge left and that was to improve my own retirement financial process!

Unfortunately, I ran into a great number of roadblocks, pitfalls or in plain terms –failures. I went into selling Herbalife (did lose 15 pounds though), tried my hand at Empower Network and numerous other programs sponsored by the renowned GURUs at the time.

Most of these programs took some serious money to get into and really ate up a great deal of my savings. Without bothering you with a list I will say one thing-I did learn online marketing backwards and forwards. The two major problems centered around a real lack of any comprehensive training, coaching or any up-to-date how-to training; coupled with very low commissions on sales I did make.

Then one-day last year, I opened an email that went something like this: Multi-millionaire wants you to partner with him and make commissions of….

Well, the rest Is history! This one email, which I wished I had received it several years ago, has put me back on track on improving my financial freedom.

The purpose of this book is to help others improve their process, whether you are still in the beginning stages of your career, a baby boomer, or retired, so that you have a retirement income for life. Still before you can move forward, it’s important to understand the challenges that we all face as we try to prepare for retirement throughout our careers.

Experiences in Working Life

No matter who we are, we all have had some pretty similar experiences in the working world. Most of us work for a paycheck, and depending on our employer, we might be able to contribute to a 401(k) or other form of retirement plan. Government agencies and some companies may offer a pension plan, but most of those have faded, as retirement savings has become the problem of the employee, not the employer. Still no matter who we are, if we are collecting a paycheck, then we are paying into Social Security.

The idea of these two forms of retirement income, the 401(k) and Social Security, are meant to provide someone who has reached their golden years the ability to enjoy a comfortable lifestyle without financial stress. For many of us, however, that is not really the case. Retirement savings do not seem to stretch as far. Those who have not yet retired, may have a harder time making their paychecks stretch to include a regular contribution into their retirement savings account. During economic downturns, those same retirement accounts suddenly become a place to get funds to cover the basic costs of living.

Then before we know it, retirement has come and we are depending on Social Security with little other savings to handle any emergencies, from a health crisis to major home repairs. The picture for women is much worse. They often make less than their male counterparts, which translates into less of a contribution into Social Security and therefore, a lower monthly amount at retirement. But there are more challenges that individuals are facing in retirement these days.

Retirement New Challenges

For baby boomers, their more sedentary lifestyle has resulted in more chronic illnesses as they age. These medical challenges translate into additional retirement costs beyond what most have in their savings.

According to a study released by JAMA Internal Medicine, baby boomers are less physically active, more likely to be overweight, and suffering from hypertension and high cholesterol. This means they are getting sicker earlier in life, which often means retiring early as they cannot continue to work at their previous pace, if at all. Still, with medical interventions, those chronic illnesses can be managed in such a way as to extend your life. Yet the quality of life may not be all that we anticipated when we dreamed of retirement.

Baby boomers are finding themselves reaching retirement age, but physically struggling and often with a long list of doctors and medications. This causes stress throughout retirement, as the question each month may come down to medications versus other necessities of life. Social Security is not even guaranteed a cost of living increase, so as a retiree, you may find yourself dealing with inflation without additional resources. What should be the golden years, become the years of scrimping just to make ends meet from month to month.

Attempts to Try Different Methods

For current retirees and those that are close to retirement, the challenge seems to be how to grow your retirement funds beyond the traditional contributions. There are plenty of options available. Some individuals use investments to build their savings, but those investments could easily go sour and result in major losses to your retirement savings.

We have a fairly recent example of this in the Great Recession that started in 2008. Millions of investors lost a fair amount as the financial system struggled through the housing bust. For those who are still years away from retirement, they may be able to recover and rebuild their savings. Baby boomers and those who already had retired are not so lucky. Incomes from investments were cut or simply disappeared.

Therefore, individuals found themselves in the position to try to find new income sources. This could mean trying a new sales opportunity, looking for investment properties or other opportunities that are touted as having a large return potential. But most of these opportunities come with little training and a large investment that may not be easy to recoup. No matter what you are selling, you may be told that you can make huge commissions. But often, you find yourself not making the huge commissions that those individuals did in the ads. Truly an example of results may vary.

Failures to Find the Key Program

As we search for that golden opportunity to grow our retirement savings, you cannot help but come across plenty of duds. Either we do not understand the program, we lack the ability to grow our sales due to a lack of training or we simply do not have the funds to make a large enough investment to move up to the next level.

Geographically, it is possible that one program will be more successful in an area, but not have that same success in another area. Then, there are those pyramid sales opportunities that require us to encourage others to become sales people under us. Ultimately, those sales opportunities go bust, but not before we have invested large amounts of time and capital.

As you can see, it takes a fairly savvy individual to find the right program that takes our investment and helps it to grow. Often, the process of finding that key means that we suffer more than a few losses. Loss of Retirement Funds

So what happens when the retirement funds are lost? For many, it means reducing expenses and trying to make the remaining funds stretch. It may also mean that