5 Retirement Strategies for Small Business Owners
If you’re a small business owner, you have a lot to juggle: your personal finances, business, employees, and family. Putting so much energy into your day-to-day operations can make it difficult to keep the bigger picture in mind.
So when it comes to planning for your retirement, you could use some help. Consider these strategies to both help prepare yourself for retirement, and also maintain the success of your business.
1. Your retirement roadmap
Are you one of the 33% of small business owners who don’t have a retirement strategy in place? Retirement won’t happen on its own. Even if you have a successful business, you still need to plan for the future.
Take some time to consider what you want out of retirement, how you’d like to spend your time, and any associated costs. From there, you can build strategies to help achieve these goals, which may include adjusting your investments or reconsidering your retirement timeline. Along the way, check-in with yourself to see if you are on track for your goals.
2. Succession
Hopefully, your business is strong enough to outlast you into retirement and beyond. Therefore, it’s important to have a succession plan in place for when you’re ready to step away. This includes defining your exit strategy, whether it be passing down to a family member or completing a sale.
It can help to hire a professional who can determine the valuation of your company and the steps you may need to take in order to fetch the asking price you’re looking for. Your succession plan also may require taking additional steps in your business, like slight changes to your business model or services.
Having a plan ready before your own retirement is key. Not only will it alleviate the stress of planning for your business’s future, it will keep you and your business prepared for anything that might happen in the future.
3. What to do with business profits?
With cash coming into your business, it can be difficult to know whether to reinvest your earnings into growing your business even further, or saving extra cash for retirement. On one hand, a more valuable business can generate cash flows for you into retirement, or fetch a higher sale price later. But, relying on your business to carry you through retirement is a huge risk, especially if economic or industry factors change and make it more difficult for your company.
Maintaining balance between your personal and business financials is key. This could mean reexamining your financial plan or budget while still maintaining a healthy business.
4. Life insurance
Between your family and your employees, there are a lot of people that depend on you. This is why life insurance can be an integral piece of retirement planning. Life insurance can help protect your loved ones and your business in the case of unforeseen circumstances, and can be especially important if your business has debts for which you are personally liable.
But life insurance can be complex, and you want to ensure you have the right coverage for your specific situation. Carefully look over the terms of any policy you choose, or work with a financial professional who can help find the right coverage for your specific situation.
5. Don’t be afraid to ask for help
You know your business, but are you keeping up-to-date with the latest legislation, policies, and changes that could impact it? In the past 22 years, there have been almost 15,500 rules published by federal agencies impacting small businesses. That’s a lot to cover!
Tax professionals, attorneys, and financial professionals can all be great resources to help guide you through the retirement process as a small business owner. Working with a team of professionals can alleviate much of the decision-making process and help guide you on the path to retirement.
Learn more about how we can support you as an entrepreneur, or reach out to us directly to schedule a meeting or ask a question.