How Do I Know If I Can Retire? A 6-Point Readiness Check
episodePreviously titled “Ep 119 | How Do I Know If I Can Retire? A 6-Point Readiness Check” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 2, 2026
Wealthy After 40: Retirement Planning and Budgeting for Gen X
19 min
2 speakers
1 chapter
transcribed 1 month ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
In today's episode, we're discussing how to know if you're retirement ready by discussing six areas of retirement readiness, how to assess where you are within that area, and what the next steps are. If this is of interest to you, be sure to sign up for the Retirement Ready Boot Camp to go deeper into each of these areas and get more one-on-one coaching. Welcome to Wealthy After 40, where I help you turn retirement uncertainty into a clear, actionable plan. If you're thinking about retirement but feel unsure whether it's even possible, I understand. The gap between where you are now and where you want to be can feel overwhelming, but it doesn't have to. Hi, I'm Daylene Higgins, founder of Elevate Finances and your personal financial coach.
Having retired at the age of 50 and have enjoyed over two years of retirement bliss, I'm here to help you create your retirement dream and make it a reality. No more wondering, no more guessing, just taking action and building a future for yourself. Join me each week as I guide you through essential topics such as budgeting, cash flow, lifestyle planning, debt and savings, insurance, Medicare, and social security. Together, we'll build a strategy to help you achieve the retirement you've always desired. It's time to shift from uncertain to unstoppable and make your retirement dreams a reality. Last week, we talked about fears and limiting beliefs that may be holding us back from retirement planning.
If you haven't listened to that episode, go give it a listen, and it'll hopefully unfreeze you, help you be ready to start taking those steps to retirement. This week, we're talking about how to assess your readiness for retirement. You know... Retirement planning, unless you work with a financial planner, and even then, really the focus is about that number. We talked about that in last episode. And yes, we need to try and reach that number, but there is so much more to planning for retirement than just money. I believe that. That's been a motto of mine. And we really need to better understand what... what and how to prepare for retirement to make that number that we're trying to achieve more realistic.
In this episode, I'm going to help you better understand what the areas are, what the things are that you need to think about in planning for retirement. But we're going to walk you through the The concepts of readiness. How do you know if you're ready? Well, there's some areas that certain things need to happen, not with perfection. Definitely, we're still human, but really going through an understanding of all of these areas, what it takes, kind of the roadmap as we talk about this. You know, this will be, okay, do this one, then do this one, then do this. And there's statements within each that kind of say, I've done all of these things. What we're going to do is just review that. It is a scorecard that I'm using in my bootcamp.
I will share more about my bootcamp if you haven't listened to the last episode and how this fits in with that three-day experience. To kick off area one of retirement readiness, it's your financial starting point. Within this area, you need to know your current household income. It's surprising how many people don't really know that. The second thing, I know my exact expenses, and I'm gonna use exact loosely because I track them and I understand where my money goes each month. You have this level of awareness of your spending, what it takes to run your household, I talked about that last week, and just really understanding your expenses. Statement number three, I know how much debt I owe and I have a plan to pay it off.
The last, I have a savings amount that can support any unexpected expense. These four areas give you an idea of where to start and how to solve. That last one with the savings amount, your emergency fund as some people call it, that can really support those expenses. And these are not even emergencies. Those expenses that are not the monthly, that kind of come sporadically, or they do have a system that they're showing up maybe annually, quarterly, biannually, whatever, but that you have an amount set aside that is not having you dig into your credit card.
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Chapters
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