There’s a term course corrections that refers to slight changes in a course in order to get to a specific destination. When you’re at the grocery store with milk in mind, you might need to venture down a different aisle than normal to avoid a spill or plethora of shoppers with stuffed carts. Driving to and from work, you might decide to change your route slightly to account for traffic or construction. Your destination or goal always remains the same, but slight alterations are often required to get there.

You might not realize it, but financial goals also require course corrections.  An example of this is planning for retirement. During earlier years while your portfolio has forty or thirty years to build up, you can choose to be riskier in your investments. Later years see individuals shifting their investments to safer options to protect against wildly fluctuating markets. There are even times of turbulence ahead that might cause you to shift your investments around and make minor course corrections. Your end goal is still a set amount that you feel comfortable retiring with, but changing your route is certainly an option that many people take.

When you’re deciding whether or not to make course corrections when contemplating retiring and closing your practice, there are certain questions to ask yourself.

1. What is the end goal? Before you can consider course corrections, you need to know what your end goal is. Having a retirement plan in place that you are comfortable with is key, especially as you close in on retirement.
2. What stage of life are you in? Are you planning on retiring in 10 years? 5 years? Next year? It is essential to know how long you have left before retiring and losing your main source of income. Ensure that your asset allocation fits with the phase you find yourself in.
3. When should you make course corrections? When you are looking at your retirement plan, you might be waffling between whether or not a course correction is necessary to reach your goal. Rankin the severity of your situation can help you determine if a course correction is the right path. Decide whether a course correction could, should or must be made and ensure that you are not risking your financial future on a whim. With retirement closing in, be sure that course corrections are not just emotionally driven, but that they are necessary to reach your goal.

Are you serious about retirement?

If you are serious about retiring and closing your practice, there are other things to consider besides your financial status. In addition to the dollars in your savings account, you also need to handle the physical closing of your practice. That means informing patients and employees, selling equipment and cancelling insurance policies. You will also need to manage the mounds of patient and billing records at your facility, which My Retired Doctor can help with! If you are looking to close your practice and want to offload some of the responsibility of document management, My Retired Doctor is here and happy to help!