When people think of retirement, they most likely think of what they will be doing with their retirement income or pension. There are different retirement options available, allowing employees to fully enjoy their retirement.
In this article, you’ll learn more about pensions and how much an employee should get for retirement.
What Are Pensions?
A retirement plan involves a sum of cash paid to a retired employee or a retired contractor. A pension plan, which is a form of a retirement plan, requires employers to make contributions for their employees’ future benefit. The pool of funds invested on behalf of the employee, including investment earnings or generated income, will be given to the employee upon retirement.
Employees can also voluntarily contribute part of their current income from their salary into their investment plan to fund their retirement. On the other hand, employees can match a portion of their employees’ yearly contributions up to a certain dollar amount of percentage.
Managing your wealth and retirement savings would be more effortless if you listen to professionals and use a digital platform such as a robo advisor to ensure higher returns on your retirement income investment. If you ask what’s a robo advisor, it’s the technology that refers to a service using highly specialized software doing the job of investment advisors or wealth managers, and they automate investments over time.
Types Of Retirement Plans
The two main types of retirement plans are defined-contribution plans and defined-benefit plans. Here are the details of each plan:
- Defined-Contribution Plan: In this plan, an employer provides the employee with a specified amount of money on an annual or semi-annual basis. The money can be invested in a variety of different assets. These investments are used by the employee to pay a fixed sum of money into a pension fund. This is typically a very safe form of investing, but there are times when the market goes down, and the value of the money decreases.
- Defined-Benefit Plan: With this plan, the same thing happens except that the benefits are also paid into a pension plan. The employer provides a benefit to the retired employee that’s equal to the amount of money previously paid into the plan. Unlike the defined-contribution plan, a defined-benefit plan is usually guaranteed by the government. The advantage of this type is that the employer never has to pay anything.
A defined-benefit plan allows the employee to receive a regular sum of money as a benefit, instead of the regular cash paid out in a defined-contribution plan. With a defined-benefit plan, the benefit doesn’t change unless the company decides to change it. It’s usually based on the employee’s age, the length of time the employer has been around, and the amount of money used to provide the plan. A retirement benefit plan is often used to replace the retirement benefits that the employee would have received after they had left the company.
Other Types Of Pension Plans
Pension plans are not just limited to those that work for a certain company. There are other types of plans available to employees who work in non-unionized workplaces. They include the 401(k) plans, a healthcare savings plan, and the defined-contribution plans commonly known as IRAs.
Here are the things you need to know about 401(k) plans and IRAs:
- A Roth IRA pertains to a special retirement account wherein the account holder pays taxes on money going into their account. This arrangement allows account holders to defer taxes on withdrawals, enabling them to save on taxes that accrue after retirement.
- A Roth account holder can either withdraw the funds when they reach retirement age or take a tax-deferred option known as a rollover to a new account. A rollover can occur when a person retires or starts a new job. This is commonly called a ‘Roth’ rollover.
- An individual can withdraw their contributions to an IRA at any time, regardless of when they retire. However, if an account holder has other tax-deferred accounts, they must begin paying taxes on their withdrawals after reaching retirement age.
- A 401(k) refers to a retirement account sponsored by the employer, allowing employees to dedicate a certain pre-tax percentage to their retirement account.
- IRAs are not appropriate for self-employed individuals who have substantial assets.
- IRAs and Roth accounts also have limits regarding the amount of money that can be contributed annually. Some IRAs limit account holders to a single contribution per year. Other IRAs have annual contribution limits of around USD$5,000. Some accounts may require account holders to contribute even more to reach the yearly limits.
- There are also some IRA and 401(k) plans that have limits concerning what accounts can be held. For example, some IRAs and 401(k) plans prohibit account holders from maintaining a high-interest savings account, foreign currency accounts, certificates of deposit, bank accounts, and credit unions.
How Much Should You Get For Retirement?
The amount of your retirement depends on your requirements. If you want a little bit of extra money to buy something special in your retirement, then you can get by with less. If you need a lot to buy a new home and give you a big tax break, then you might have to look for other ways to fund your retirement.
Your options include annuities, stocks, shares, and bonds that came in. You can take the amount you get now and put it into these different types of investments to make your retirement pay off much faster.
Here are the good-to-know facts about how much money should one get for retirement:
- According to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation or PBGC, if a pension fund cannot pay the amount owed to the retiree, PBGC can pay a portion of the monthly annuity, which is USD$67,295.25 maximum for a 65-year old retiree.
- There’s no definite rule as to how much you should get for your retirement. Helpful guides show that by the time you reach 55, one should aim to attain accruing retirement savings seven times their current annual salary. By the time a person turns 60, they should have earned retirement savings eight times their annual salary.
- Some retirement experts say that your retirement savings must be somewhere near one million US dollars or 80-90% of the person’s annual pre-retirement income, which is 12 times the pre-retirement salary.
Tips When Choosing Pension Plans
When choosing the right type of pension plan for you, it’s crucial to do the following:
1) Check The Duration Of The Plan
One urgent factor to look at when determining what type of plan to choose is how long the plans will last. There are some plans that only last until the end of the employee’s employment contract, while others may continue for as long as the employee is gainfully employed. Also, while a plan may last as long as five or ten years, there are some plans that require an active employee to be contributing to the plan every year.
2) Consider Status Of Employment
When thinking about what type of plan to get, a future retiree should assess their current status of employment. Whether one works in a permanent position or holds a part-time job would be paramount in enacting any future plan. Part-time workers don’t usually qualify for pensions because they’re not considered as high-risk for the company. It might be best to look for alternatives if this is your case.
3) Choose A Beneficial Plan For You
Before you decide to get a pension plan, you will have to determine if it’s truly the kind that will be beneficial for you in the long run. A pension plan usually gives an employee a certain amount of money upon retirement. But if you plan on having to depend on this amount for your entire lifetime, you will want to make sure that it will give you enough to live comfortably during that time. If you plan on retiring at a much younger age than usual, a more flexible investment to combine with your retirement plan might be more appropriate for you to have greater retirement savings.
4) You Can Make Changes
As you consider which type of plan to get, keep in mind that you can change the plan whenever you feel that it doesn’t suit your financial needs or if it doesn’t match with your life circumstances already as you go on with your life later. Remember that a defined-benefit plan can only be changed through a change in ownership. This means that the company or the employee must agree to these changes.
Conclusion
Now that you have learned the basics about pensions and how much you should receive to live a comfortable life during your retirement years, the next thing to do is survey brand options out there. Choosing the best pension plan according to your needs will help you to fully enjoy your later years. How much you need to receive for retirement remains to be a very personal case, and it will depend largely on the level of your retirement income, current and future medical status, the current state of your health, your lifestyle, your family’s income, and other personal considerations.
