10 Most Devastating Things that Destroy Your Retirement

I am a contributor at FiLife.com. For anyone who has never been there, I highly suggest you check out the site. There is a lot of great information there. It also has the best Question & Answer section I’ve seen in regards to financial information. Here’s where my experiment comes in, I asked the following question:

What is the single, most devastating thing that can completely destroy your retirement and all the planning you’ve put into it?

This question received 14 comments by 9 different people. I first want to thank everyone for their contributions. I will do so by doing my best to link to their sites in the following list. Without further ado…

The Top 10 Most Devastating Things that Destroy Your Retirement

10. Liability Exposure from Mark Kantrowitz – I feel like this is something that is easy to protect yet most people don’t understand it so they do nothing, until it’s too late.

9. Divorce from Kevin Brosious – I’ve been through this so it wasn’t going to be too high on my list. Definitely recoverable.

8. Company Stock from Kees DeWit – To me you are investing in something you know more about or might be more comfortable with. This isn’t a horrible thing but you do need to be diversified in other investments as well.

7. Lack of Diversification from Mark Kantrovitz – Going hand-in-hand with #8. Overexposure to one area can cause a lot of pain.

6. Unemployment from Morris Armstrong – Being out of work for an extended period of time can cause you to eat into or eliminate everything you have worked for and everything you were hoping for in regards to retirement.

5. Inability to Live Within Your Means from Elanor Blayney – It does matter how much money you make or what your investments look like. If you keep building debt then you are either destroying your retirement or you just might never have one.

4. Chronic Medical Issue from Fern Alix LaRocca – With the rising cost of health treatments and how increasingly difficult it is to have adequate (not even good) insurance coverage, this not only affects you during the illness but long after as well.

3. Total Disability from Fischer Financial – Unfortunately, you don’t recover from this. Once you stop working you can’t even contribute to your retirement plan so no need to worry some earlier numbers.

2. Death from Morris Armstrong – No one can ever truly prepare for this. Nothing is worse for your retirement then never even getting there. Hopefully those that depend on you are protected.

1. Lack of [Proper] Preparation from Elanor Blayney – As I look back at this list, there are a lot of things that can be negated to some extend. The only way to do that is to plan and prepare.

So there’s my list, what do you think? I struggled with a few of these and there are definitely arguments to move a few things around. I’ve love to hear your responses…that’s what the comments are for. In the end I had to add in the word ‘proper’ to really finish the list off. Unfortunately, so many people hire a so-called financial planner but they don’t get proper planner. I see planners all the time gloss over a lot of the things I just listed. Maybe this will work as a guideline to help you make sure you are working with a good planner. Did he/she cover everyone of these areas?