DETROIT - Although planning for a financially sound
retirement can be an overwhelming process, it doesn't have to
be if people start making decisions about it before they
retire and seek professional help to steer them in the right
direction.
Jim Lampertius, an attorney in Farmington Hills, knows it
usually takes a trigger point to prompt most people into
getting their financial and legal documents prepared for
their senior years. "There is an element of procrastination,
and for a few years I was like the shoemaker without shoes,"
said the managing attorney at Lampertius and Associates.
"Our international travel was a spurring point for us," said
Lampertius, who adopted four Guatemalan children with his
wife.
"Guardianship for minor children is a good example of a
trigger point," he said. "When we adopted our first child, we
really knew we had to expand beyond a simple will and medical
and financial powers of attorney."
As an attorney who also holds a graduate certificate from
Wayne State University's Institute of Gerontology, he has
seen the court system shatter families who did not plan
ahead. That experience and his growing family "was our main
impetus to do a living trust as a married couple."
Living trusts are growing in popularity, he said, "and the
true value of a trust is to protect beneficiaries." That
could include such instances as a child with a disability or
a spouse who is ill.
"Anticipating that help, and providing guidance on that help,
ensures the best respect of the dignity for the person," said
Lampertius, a lifelong Catholic. "It also provides the most
effective way to get the best proper care and
administration."
While many consider the financial retirement portion of their
estate planning early on in their career, they often overlook
medical directives, which vary by state.
Lampertius said it is important for a person at any stage of
life to make sure their "financial and legal health is in
order to properly respond to life as it evolves." In the past
20 years, he said, retirement planning has emphasized
retirement accounts that enable money to be inherited or
managed at death without accelerating all the taxes.
Not all retirees are able to afford a trained professional to
help them get their finances in order and may also have
difficulty with organizing expenses which is where Catholic
Charities agencies often come in.
Several Catholic Charities agencies provide programs to help
seniors understand and manage their personal finances and
often also provide bill-paying and budgeting assistance.
Catholic Charities Hawaii offers a Money Management
Assistance to the Elderly Program that fills the growing need
of many elderly who cannot manage their own finances because
of their increasing frailty, forgetfulness and confusion. The
service allows elders to continue to live independently in
their own homes and communities and avoid premature moves
into nursing homes.
For those who are not in financial straits and not quite
ready to retire, the AARP recommends another key way to
stretch earnings for the later years: Keep working.
More than 60 percent of workers say they expect to retire at
age 65 or later, according to a survey by the Employee
Benefit Research Institute, up from 45 percent in 1991.
The 2008 book Working Longer: The Solution to the Retirement
Income Challenge advises prolonging retirement for at even
two to four years to preserve one's retirement savings and
delay taking Social Security.