COLLEGE STATION – While financial planning for retirement should be on the mind of working men and women throughout the year, the third week in October has been designated by Congress as National Save for Retirement Week, said a Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service family economics expert.
“This year, the week of Oct. 20-26 has been set as a time when financial professionals, educators and others interested in increasing the public’s awareness of retirement planning attempt to get people to pay greater attention to identifying their personal retirement goals and understanding what they must do to reach them,” said Nancy Granovsky, AgriLife Extension family economics specialist in College Station.
Granovsky said often people are too focused on short-term financial goals and do not pay adequate attention to long-term planning toward a comfortable retirement.
“These days, everyone thinks and worries about money,” Granovsky said. “The uncertainty in the economy, changes in employer-provided retirement plans and worries about the future of Social Security have made it imperative that people save more today to ensure their retirement years can provide an adequate level of retirement income.”
She said to help people focus on retirement goals and what is needed to achieve them, AgriLife Extension has a number of informational resources in the Your Money section of the Family and Consumer Sciences website, http://fcs.tamu.edu/money/your_money/retirement_planning.php.
“These include two free online short courses you can access through the website,” she said.
Granovsky said the Planning for a Secure Retirement Short Course and Investing for Your Future Home Study Course provide information needed to help identify retirement goals and plan for retirement.
Other resources through the website include financial calculators for determining how to fund a comfortable retirement, making retirement decisions, and estimating retirement benefits at different ages. There is also a link to financial engines for web-assisted financial planning, as well as a link to the U.S. Department of Labor’s “Taking the Mystery Out of Retirement Planning” publication and other links to financial planning resources.
-30-