Lesson 1
Retire When You Want
Lesson 2
Running the Numbers
Lesson 3
Sources of Income
How to Pay for Retirement
Five Income Sources
The Inflation Relation
Lesson Summary
Homework Assignment
Lesson 4
Investing Now
Lesson 5
Investing Now and Later
Lesson 6
What To Do? Where To Live?
Lesson 7
Medical and Other Insurance
Lesson 8
What It Will Really Cost
Lesson 9
Tax Attack
Lesson 10
Making Your Money Last
Lesson 11
Your Heirs, Your Disasters
Lesson 12
Plan Review
The Motley Fool's Roadmap To Retirement Self-Paced Online Seminar
Lesson 3: Sources of Income
How to Pay for Retirement

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By Dave Braze (TMF Pixy)

Congratulations!! By filling out your Net Worth and Cash Flow statements (even if you just did some estimating), you've done a bulk of the heavy lifting in your retirement planning.

 But, you might have noticed that we really didn't talk about how to pay for it. You probably noticed that the top portion of our Cash Flow Statement has a place for you to list all your sources of income. Today, it's time to think about the money spigot: Where will our retirement income come from? Will it come as a gushing torrent, or in a trickling drip-drip-drip? Will we be able to frolic in the pool, or will we sit on a stoop in summer, our lips cracked, praying for a couple of droplets?

When all is said and done, there are really only five sources of retirement income. They are:

  1. Social Security

  2. Employer-provided pensions

  3. Personal savings (taxable accounts, 401k/403b/457 plans, IRAs, etc.)

  4. Work (wages)

  5. Other (OK, we admit this is a broad category, but it includes things like gifts and inheritances and the collection of Bicentennial quarters you stole from under your sister's bed when you were 11.)

We'll go through this list briefly, and provide you with links to other resources (on Fool.com and elsewhere) that'll give you the specifics you might need.


« Finding Your Costs Five Income Sources »

 

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