Free Investment Advice

We all want to retire one day, leave the office, our bosses and our desk behind. We will finally be free to do what we want! But what if you’re self-employed? Some people argue that they are already free to do what they want. But even a self employed person wants to pack it all in and enjoy the good life. Here are some tips for the self employed person to enjoy the benefits of retirement.

1. Make a plan. You have experience in planning, just like a business plan for starting and running your own business, a retirement plan is actually much simpler. Ask yourself what you want to do when you retire, or even when you want to retire. When you’re working for yourself, you don’t have to retire at sixty-five if you don’t want to. But what ever your desires might be, having a solid plan will make sure that you will have enough money to do what you wanted to do.

2. Set up a retirement plan. When you’re self employed, you are the employee as well as the employer. There won’t be any company pension or retirement benefits. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing out there. A Keogh plan is a retirement plan that’s designed especially for the self employed. This plan lets you put money away for retirement, this money will be tax-deferred like other retirement payments. The Keogh plan is either defined contribution or deigned benefit.

3. Contribute as much as you can. Before you do that you must first read the fine print. Depending which type of Keogh plan you have, there will be limits to the amount of contributions per year. If you can choose a plan that sets a higher limit, and contribute as much as you can afford.

4. Open an IRA account. You can have more than one retirement account, actually it’s advisable to have as many as you can afford. If you don’t know how to open an IRA account, you can just visit your local bank or credit union. You can choose between a traditional plan and a Roth IRA, but most people opt for Roth as you can contribute more.

5. Choose a financial planner. For a company pension, financial decisions are made by financial consultants on behalf of the employees. They offer all kinds of different options for investment, to give the company a diversified portfolio. You can also get a financial planner to help you do the same. You can have an investment portfolio that comprises of low, medium and high risk investments to give you the best results.

6. Talk to your spouse. Although you’re self employed, your spouse might have a regular job with a retirement plan with their employer. They might want to take advantage of their plan and put in as much as possible.

Everyone will retire one day. Just because you’re self employed, it doesn’t mean you can get yourself a secure pension. There are many options out there waiting for you to explore.