Nearing retirement, strategic spending can improve both financial flexibility and quality of life. Song_about_summer/Shutterstock
For people hurtling toward retirement, the standard personal finance advice is to continue to fund your retirement accounts as aggressively as you can, including taking advantage of catch-up contributions.
Those additional contributions can add up to a tidy sum in retirement, but after age 60, they have fewer years to compound, and the tax deferral isn’t as valuable. If your retirement numbers are in relatively good shape, however, consider these four spending strategies with a positive psychological payoff.
Strategy 1: Get Ahead of Big-Ticket Transactions
As retirement approaches, it’s helpful to forecast big-ticket outlays over the next two to five years, like home repairs or improvements or cars you’ll need to replace. If you’re still working, you can fund them out of cash flows rather than putting additional funds into your retirement accounts.
