Green Retirement Blog

If you’re thinking about retirement, don’t think, act. Now, may be the best and last opportunity, for you to retire in a long time. Americans have most of their assets, retirement savings, divided in two categories - Homes and Stocks. And both are declining in value.

There is the real and growing possibility that the U.S. economy is heading into a recession. And if you are planning to retire within the next five years, you may not want to wait, you may be better off retiring right now. Why? Because, any additional savings, you may make towards retirement, could be more than offset by losses in the two asset categories I’ve mentioned.

This is a topic I feel so strongly about, that I have made it a permanent article on the Retirement Website, and my first Retirement Blog article. From the retirement website article Retire Now I write:

This is not an attempt to scare you, or even predict what will happen in the future, but to point out something called “Opportunity Risk”. You may have heard of “Opportunity Cost”, that is the cost of choosing one opportunity over another, opportunity risk is the probability of missing an opportunity. If you have the opportunity to retire now, by waiting and not retiring now, you risk not being able to retire later. Or retiring with a lower net worth.

Only you can make that risk determination. Everyone’s situation is different. However, if after doing an individual risk assessment, you believe that there is a greater risk of a lower economy, and that your net worth may significantly decline within your retirement horizon, you should get serious and develop a retirement plan.

It’s true that everyone’s situation is different, you may receive valuable stock options, your company could go public, it may be wiser not to retire just yet, even if the predictions of recession are accurate. Only you can make that call. And it’s true that predictions are a tricky business, especially economic ones, and so in general I will stay out of the prediction game.

However, I hope you will take the point I made about “Opportunity Risk” seriously, and besides, it never hurts to start planning your retirement.

Learn more about Green Retirement Planning - And find out how you can save your retirement and the planet!