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Phoenix Retirement Planning

Phoenix retirement planning may involve creating a portfolio of safe investments. It’s important to have safe investments for your Phoenix retirement, because you’ll need to have reliable funds for your later years. Of course, if you’re starting your Phoenix retirement planning early, you don’t have to worry as much about safe investments yet. However, as you get closer to your retirement, you want to make sure you have reliable savings in your Arizona accounts rather than high-risk investments.

If you’re new to investing, planning your investments may involve learning some financial vocabulary. For example, you’ve probably heard about stocks and bonds, but do you know what an index fund is? Index mutual funds are an effective way to meet your long-term investment goals, and therefore may be a part of your Phoenix retirement planning.

Safe Investments

You may know that a Phoenix banks savings account is one of your safest investments. An Arizona bank savings account is designed to hold money which you’re not planning to use immediately. Bank savings accounts pay a slightly higher amount than AZ checking accounts, since you earn a fair amount of interest on money that’s in a Phoenix bank savings account.

Certificates of Deposit, called CD’s are also very safe investments. Like a savings account, CD’s pay interest on your money, but it’s usually more than a typical Phoenix bank account pays. You have to keep your money in the CD for a certain amount of time, though, which is one reason why you’ll probably want to invest in a CD before your retirement. Once your CD matures, you have a window of time to withdraw the money or reinvest it.

Government issues securities are also a reliable investment to consider when you’re planning your retirement. You can get treasury bonds, notes or bills. These investments are backed by the US government, and the interest is exempt from Arizona taxes, but they may be subject to federal income tax. These are considered very safe investments, so if you’re planning on creating reliable portfolio, treasury securities may be a good investment.

Money market funds are not as safe as a bank savings account or CDs, they are still pretty safe and may be worth considering during your Phoenix retirement planning. A money market fund is a mutual fund, which invests in the stock market. In other words, money market funds basically borrow and loan money. Money market funds take your money and invest it, and pay you dividends. Note that there are some risks in money market funds, and you may want to consult a Phoenix financial advisor As to whether this is reasonable purchase for your portfolio.

A fixed annuity is basically a contract with an insurance company, and it often comes with guaranteed income. It’s important to consider income during your Phoenix retirement planning. However, annuities are pretty expensive, and they’re not liquid. So, if you want to access the money in your annuity, you can expect to pay some pretty serious penalties. Also, annuities have many different restrictions, so you may want to consult a Phoenix retirement planning specialist before purchasing an annuity.

It’s important to realize that even the safest investments involve some risk. Inflation, for example, is always a possibility. Furthermore, you may lose principal, though that’s unlikely with a safe investment. In any case, you should remember: Phoenix, AZ banks are insured, so retirement planning specialists will assure you that your money is better off in an Arizona savings account than under your mattress.

Index Funds

Index funds may be considered during your Phoenix retirement planning. If you think of an index like a ruler, it may help you understand index funds. An index basically tracks the price movement or performance of stocks. So, an index fund, or portfolio of index funds, is basically like owning a piece of all the stocks out there. You can try to cherry pick your favorite stocks, or you could just hedge your bets and get a whole handful of them together.

Index mutual funds cost less and other investments, because they don’t require any research. Index funds may be an option to consider during your Phoenix retirement planning, because they’re a good value. However, when the stock market goes down, the index funds go down as well. Still, what goes down usually comes up, and index funds are generally a good investment.

When you’re considering different investments during the early stages of your Phoenix retirement planning. you can focus on growth. In other words, if you don’t plan to retire for several decades, safe investments don’t need to be your priority. However, if you’ve only just begun your retirement planning, and you hope your last days of working around the corner, you should focus your portfolio on safe, reliable investments.