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The Global Insight

What do you need to know before retirement?

Author

Sarah Garza

Updated on February 08, 2026

Ready, set, retire – 8 deadlines you need to know

  1. Help avoid unnecessary additional taxes by knowing the dates for optional and required retirement plan withdrawals.
  2. Your Social Security income may decrease or increase depending on the age at which you choose to begin receiving benefits.

Is retirement a want or need?

Retirement, after all, is supposed to be the land of wants. It’s supposed to be the time in your life for which you’ve worked, saved, invested and planned so that you don’t have to be worried about needs and can do, well, whatever you want.

What do you need to do to retire?

Here’s a checklist for retiring in 2021:

  1. Decide when to start Social Security.
  2. Sign up for Medicare or other health insurance.
  3. Check your retirement benefits.
  4. Take advantage of last-minute benefits at work.
  5. Consider rolling over your 401(k) to an IRA.
  6. Make a financial plan.
  7. Decide what to do next.

How much money do you need to retire comfortably at age 55?

Experts say to have at least seven times your salary saved at age 55. That means if you make $55,000 a year, you should have at least $385,000 saved for retirement.

When do you need to Know Your Retirement Income?

But while these percentages can be useful for planning purposes when retirement is decades down the road, you don’t want to rely on them as much when you’re within, say, five to ten years of retiring. At that point, you ideally want to have a more accurate idea of what your retirement expenses might be and how much income you’ll need to cover them.

What’s the percentage of preretirement income I need to retire?

For an earlier retirement and claiming age, this target goes up due to lower Social Security retirement benefits. Similarly, the target goes down for a later retirement age. For a retirement age of 65, this target is defined as 50% of preretirement annual income, and for a retirement age of 70,…

What happens to your finances when you retire?

When you’re on a fixed income, a hefty mortgage or car payment can put a major strain on your finances. It also makes it more difficult to deal with unexpected expenses. Before you hand in your retirement notice, try to whittle down most, if not all, of your outstanding debts. How Much Should I Save for Retirement? 3.

When do you need to start saving for retirement?

Our savings factors are based on the assumption that a person saves 15% of their income annually beginning at age 25, invests more than 50% on average of their savings in stocks over their lifetime, retires at age 67, and plans to maintain their preretirement lifestyle in retirement (see footnote 1 for more details).