Retirement is one of those great land marks in a life time. Like all of the great milestones, it is packed full of emotion and expectation.

Your 18th and 21st birthdays were times for hope and optimism for the approaching adult years and all tat life will bring you, and equally retiring should be about all the opportunity to do the things we spend our working lives looking forward to having the chance to do. Spending time with our nearest and dearest and indulging in our hobbies and interests. Inevitable, there will also be some regret than we are leaving behind our careers and our workmates, and an enormous part of how we define ourselves.

Most of all are also likely to feel a degree of trepidation about our uncertain future as well. Racked with doubt about whether the financial preparation we have made for later years will actually be sufficient for us to enjoy them

Many issue have combined recently to make these times some of the most hostile for the retiree that our current economies have ever seen. We live longer, and get fewer benefits from our employer’s ad governments than ever before. The returns from our investments are at an all time low, and yet the cost of living continues to rise inexorably.

Where once the obligation was on the state for which we spend our lives working to ensure that we had sufficient retiring income to ensure our later years ere comfortable, the responsibility has now dropped firmly on to our own shoulders.

The first thing to do is to figure out how much you are likely to require, to have the sort of retirement you would like. Many of our current expenses will have changed for the better by then.

For example, it is hoped by most that they would have paid off mortgages and other home loans by then. We are also unlikely to need more than a single, fuel-efficient car in our latter years. Maybe not even that if we can live with public transport

Other costs will rise though, as you take more holidays, or spend more money indulging your hobbies.

There are numerous income calculators available online, along with much useful information on how to maximise your retirement income, but by way of illustration it is estimates that to have a retirement income of $60, 000 per annum, one would need to have invested a nest egg of $1 Million!

The secret of getting this much money together is to start saving early in you working lives and to be realistic about how much you will need to put aside every month.

Perhaps the most realistic opinion is to make what you have go a little bit further by finding ways of making money during retirement.

This is most likely to be by capitalising on something you already do as a hobby. If you are a good photographer then buy yourself something like canon digital powershot camera and take some photos of things other people may pay more to get a copy of. Local landmarks, for instance.