Retirement Planning

Choosing a Financial Professional
Have you wondered if you should use a financial professional to help you with your finances? This series will help you think through what type of financial professional would be right for you, and provide you with resources to ask informed questions.

IRA Basics
Use this easy-to-read table to compare Traditional IRAs and Roth IRAs.

Plan Well, Retire Well: Your how-to guide
This website could be your how-to guide for retirement planning. Learn about investments and how to save money through tax-deferred retirement plans. Use interactive tools to help evaluate your current money situation and set goals for the future.

Planning for "What If...?"
With these fact sheets you will learn about tools (such as estate planning) you can use to aid you and your family in the event of disability, incapacity, and death, or marriage, remarriage, and divorce.

Taking Distributions from Tax-Deferred Retirement Savings Plans
Putting money into an employer's retirement plan is just the first step toward financial security in retirement. How you withdraw the money also requires careful decision making. This fact sheet (in PDF format) will help you plan how manage your tax-deferred retirement savings plans. Revised in 2007.

Your Retirement Planning Checklist
Your Retirement Planning Checklist provides a systematic approach to retirement planning. The eight checklists are organizing tools and reminders that will help you stay on track as you develop your retirement plan and update it over the years. These checklists are available for purchase.

Reviewed and updated as of September 2005

E-mail:

Consumer and Family Economics
Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics
University of Illinois Extension
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign