I know most of us do not think about retirement planning most of the time and that planning for retirement can sometimes be one of our last priorities when we are faced with loads of work and family issues; myself included. However we should engage some of our time for this activity and anyway planning for retirement should not be a worrisome activity and it can actually be fun thinking about what we want to do after years of working. Retirement with at least one million dollars would certainly be fun.

In this post, I want to address the issue of planning for your income during retirement. For many of us, our plan is to save sufficiently so that we can draw from the nest egg, with whatever we can also withdraw from our corporate pension plans or Social Security, to last us for 20 to 30 years. For others, their plan is to be able to create an additional income source that could either be passive such as rental income or investment returns, or from a home business or even online business such as Ebay or general internet marketing.

My thinking about planning for retirement income is bias towards an income from small businesses and property investment. Small business, especially businesses which provides basic necessities to the people staying in your neighbourhood, are more resilient against market movements but the returns may not be spectacular.

Cafes serving students in the local university or college, local unpretentious hair saloons serving the local community, grocers and even a magazine shop can provide a nice little income while keeping ourselves active. Taking the idea further, this would mean an investment into several of such businesses with or without a few active partners. Even in businesses, I believe in diversification and investing in a variety of businesses, providing essential services, will be a strong component in our retirement plan.

Go look at what the local shops are doing. Talk to the ladies running the hair shop and understand their operations, talk to the manager running the college café and you will see that creating a few little businesses is not a daunting tasks. The income you derive from such small businesses, after paying all your staff, may not buy you that Ferrari but it will be more than enough to pay for that holiday in France and a great bottle of pinot noir in Burgundy. Go try the Boeuf Bourguignon in Beaune and you will love your retirement. We want to enjoy our retirement so go plan for how you will create that retirement income.

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