Most people think of retirement as something to deal with later. But what happens when you won’t be going to work every day? Although you may be saving money now, your spending habits are likely based on your paycheck.

“Retirement planning is as much about lifestyle planning as it is about financial planning” says Ann Wolfson of Ann Wolfson Associates. And as a long time financial planner, Ann Wolfson has seen her fair share of retirements go right – and wrong.

Ann Wolfson recommends that clients actively put themselves in a retirement mindset for a period of time and treat it as a serious exercise. “It’s sort of a retirement boot camp,” explains Wolfson. Over a period of weeks or months, she works with clients to ascertain their basic needs, their desires, and their retirement dreams.

“For some clients, it’s a wake-up call to find that they haven’t really been saving enough or in the right way. For others, it’s a sudden realization that their current spending habits are out of sync with the assets they may have in retirement. Regardless of the situation, there are many tools at my disposal to help my clients achieve financial and retirement happiness,” says Wolfson, continuing, “the best plan is to think ahead and make some decisions now.”

Some of the exercises and evaluations that Ann Wolfson puts her clients through involve spending habits, net worth reality checks, insurance audits, goal determinations, savings optimizers, tax planning, charitable giving, and estate planning.

Ann Wolfson sums it up, “For most of us, retirement is a reality that will arrive whether we are ready or not. The retirement boot camp exercises are tough work for some of my clients, but it helps them to start getting real about retirement. Ultimately, security and confidence come from facing the future and planning ahead.”

Conveniently located in Central New York state, Ann Wolfson Associates is a financial planning and consulting firm dedicated to helping individuals, families and organizations reach their financial goals. If you have questions about this article or if you would like to become a client of Ann Wolfson Associates, please call (315)449-4730.