4 major factors that influence your retirement savings

There’s no fixed age for you to start saving for retirement; the sooner, the better. It is imperative that you save enough money for your retirement so that you wouldn’t have to rely solely on Social Security benefits. Your retirement savings should be enough to take care of your and your spouse’s needs without depleting it before its preordained time. The truth is you can never calculate the exact amount of money you need to lead a comfortable life post-retirement, but you can at least arrive at an interim amount needed for your retirement.

To calculate the amount of money you need to save for retirement, you can use the free retirement calculators on the Internet. However, before you decide to use the retirement calculator, you need to consider certain other vital factors that determine how much money you will be saving for retirement, which are as follows:

Current savings
Your current savings play a major role in determining the amount of money you will be saving for retirement. If you haven’t taken your retirement savings seriously, and not saving for retirement diligently, then you will face undesirable consequences in your retirement days. According to financial experts, you will need about 70% of your current income in order to maintain your standard of living post-retirement.

Inflation
Before you start saving for retirement, there’s another crucial factor you need to considerinflation. It has been one of the major concerns of retirees since it leads to an increase in the amount of money to be saved for retirement. Retirement isn’t simply for a year or two, it spans out to several decades; thus, it is imperative that you take the possibility of inflation into account while saving for retirement since it will help you maintain your purchasing power in the face of such adversities.

Risk tolerance
Saving for your retirement will involve making sound investments that will yield benefits in your retirement days. Investments often test your ability to withstand any risks since the market is quite volatile, but this isn’t a serious situation if you still have forty years to retirement. However, if you are considering investing when you are nearing retirement, it is imperative that preserving your capital is your biggest priority since your risk tolerance will be quite low.

Taxes
Taxes won’t leave you alone even in your retirement; you still have to pay taxes as per your income sources. So, when you are saving for retirement, ensure that you acknowledge the fact that your taxes will be definitely eating into your retirement savings. However, you are excluded from paying taxes in your retirement if you depend solely on your Social Security benefits, but this isn’t a feasible thing to do.

Before you determine the amount of money you will be saving for retirement, consider the above-mentioned factors since they influence your retirement savings.