5 Ways to Calm Your Retirement Fears

I'm still quite a few years away from my retirement. But I struggle not to worry, at least a little, about that time in my life. Will I have good health and enough money? Will there be people in my life to help support me? There are so many unknowns. Instead of worrying about or avoiding the problem, let's do something about it. Here are five ways you can calm your pre-retirement fears.

[Bookmark the U.S. News Retirement site for more planning ideas and advice.]

Visit a fee-only financial adviser. Many people need a helping hand with their retirement finances at some point in their life. A great place to start is with someone who can give you an independent review of your current situation. Find a person who can give you honest, professional advice and won’t drive you toward a specific investment because of a commission they are getting. A fee-only certified financial planner is usually your best option for this. This session won't be cheap, but it will help to provide the financial assurance you are looking for. Visit the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards website to locate an independent, fee-only planner near you.

Increase your financial planning knowledge. It's common to fear the unknown. There is a lot of information that you just can't know before you retire, such as how high inflation will be and how long you will live. But there are things you can estimate, including how much income your investments are likely to provide and how much you are paying for investment expenses. Take some of the fear out of the equation by educating yourself on some of these aspects of your retirement. There are plenty of great financial planning resources available online or at your local library that will get you up to speed.

[See 5 Costs That Should Go Away in Retirement.]

Start changing your lifestyle now. If you're apprehensive about exiting the workforce, start slowly phasing into retirement to see how it will work. Consider visiting places you might like to live in retirement or gradually cutting back on the number of hours you work to ease into retirement. This way you can tweak or cut out the things that you don't enjoy or that aren't working for some reason.

Learn from others who are handling retirement successfully. Whenever I want to gain confidence in an area of my life, I look to someone who is having success. If you're within five years of retirement, you probably have some friends or relatives who have recently retired. Ask them if things are going smoothly. Find out their thoughts about retirement success. Ask them how they spend their days, what's working, and what they had to change once they retired. The bonus from this activity is that you'll retire with a network of retired friends who can mentor you throughout the initial stages.

[See 8 Ways to Make the Most of Your 401(k).]

Develop a few alternate retirement plans. Answer the tough, "What if?" questions that are causing you to have retirement anxiety. For example, what would you do if the stock market crashed just a year before you plan to retire? Would you be flexible enough to work a few more years or withdraw less from savings in the first few years of retirement? When you work through these situations and come up with alternate plans, the risks aren't that scary. You've already dealt with them on paper.

Phil Taylor is the author of the popular 52 Ways to Make Extra Money. Find out how to save more money and get the latest news on the best online savings accounts and the best online stock brokers at his blog, PT Money: Personal Finance.