6 Things to Do the Year Before You Retire

Retirement can usher in your Golden Years, as long as you prepare properly for the resulting social and financial changes. 

You will no longer have a regular paycheck to be used for your expenses. Here are five things to do the year before you retire, to help you make this transition proceed more smoothly.

1. Have Your House Inspected

Many senior citizens imagine all of the great home improvement projects they will finally have time to complete during retirement. Before retirement, having a professional inspect your house is a wise decision. 

They can take care of the deeper issues so that you can work on adding to your home or doing the DIY projects you’ve been looking forward to doing.

2. One-Time Expenses

For life transition involved in retirement, you will need to learn new spending habits. If you have a one-time splurge purchase you’ve been wanting for a long time, like a special antique car or Jacuzzi, you should probably make it before you retire. 

It is kind of like celebrating Mardis Gras before you start fasting for Lent.

3. Pay off Debt

You will still need access to capital sources after retiring. It turns out that about one-third of people aged 65 to 74 use credit cards to pay for basic living expenses (such as groceries and utilities) and have high balances on them. 

Improve your credit score by retiring some debt before you yourself retire.

4. Prepare Yourself for Fixed Income

Life is full of transitions and retirement is just one of many. Moving from a regular paycheck to a fixed income can be better handled when you plan ahead. 

You should carefully prepare the year before you retire: complete important tasks, make a budget, and adjust your assets to properly manage this financial transition. 

You might consider visiting a financial advising company like Family Financial Partners so they can help you manage your assets the way you want to.

5. Social Security Benefits

Decide when you will start to collect your Social Security benefits. If you choose to draw these benefits earlier, then your monthly check will be lower. 

Though you can technically start as early as 62, your retirement benefits will be reduced by 25 percent or more for the rest of your life. In the long run, you can maximize your Social Security check by waiting as long as possible. 

Plan ahead and determine how Social Security fits into your retirement budget.

6. Distribute IRA

For years, you might have been faithfully adding to your IRA, but now it is time to determine how much to remove each month. 

You should also consider more conservative income-producing investments to add to your IRA. Discuss your options with your wealth advisor.

Of course, life transitions also involve financial transitions and might require new ways of thinking, saving and spending. 

There is no need to fear retirement when you plan ahead. Use the year before you retire to catapult yourself into a fruitful, bountiful, and joyful retirement.

7 Ways to Use your Personal Finances for Bettering the Lives of Others

Not everyone out there is wealthy or good with money. Some people come across some hard times in their life. 

Having money is one thing, using the money to make a positive impact towards the lives of other people is another. The latter is the more worthy life goal, yet it's often a more complicated goal to achieve. 

Acts of Service

Sometimes people don’t want charity. They don’t want your money. Most of the time it is because they don’t want to be a burden on anyone else more than they have already been. 

Other times it is because they feel like they can’t ask you for money. Well you don’t have to directly give them money. Sometimes it is better to put your money towards food. You can surprise them with a basket of food to help them through their tough time. It saves them from having to spend what little money they might have grocery shopping. 

If you fear they may not accept food from you, then you can invite them over for dinner every so often or you can leave the basket of food on their doorstep. That way they don’t have to know it is you that is helping them out and they won’t feel guilty about accepting your kind gift. 

You can also do other acts of service around their house such as offering to help clean or do some yard work for them.

Invest on Their Behalf

For parents who are looking to better the lives of their children, open savings and investment accounts under their name. 

Even the smallest amount saved today can accrue in interest over a 10- to 20-year time frame, giving your children the financial security they need. 

Give Some Back to Church

Churches use a portion of the money they collect to institute feeding programs and other helpful activities that give back to the community, especially to the needy. 

It doesn't necessarily have to be a church, though. You can give to prayer groups and smaller ministries that are fighting for a worthy cause. 

Participate in Crowdfunding Campaigns

In today's digital age, people are more well-positioned to help others in need. 

Participating in crowdfunding campaigns like Move Your Mountain helps people pay for costly medical bills or cover expensive funeral arrangements. 

Develop Creative Ideas

Product or service ideas that can potentially end world hunger or cure incurable diseases are worth spending a bulk of your personal finances if not all of it. 

Of course, these two goals might seem like unreachable goals from your current point of view, but with enough dedication and financing, you could stumble upon a close enough solution to such key problems. 

Help them with Education

Education is an integral part of progressing in life. Help children get the proper education they need to secure a good future for themselves. 

Sponsoring children not only guarantees their ability to compete professionally in the future but also secures a brighter future for the planet as more people are able to come up with ideas to improve quality of life. 

Make Monthly Donations

Support animal welfare and stop animal abuse by setting automatically deducted monthly donations to your chosen organization. 

PETA, WWF, and other similar organizations are world-recognized for their efforts to help animals in need. Make sure their long-term mission continues by financing their employee's needs.

Having adequate personal finances is not enough to live a spiritually happy life. Redirecting your financial resources towards the right channel multiples your wealth and gives back in other aspects of personal life.

From House to Asset: How to Turn Your Home into an Investment

Your home is not only a sanctuary from the day-to-day commotion of life, but it's an investment in your future. 

Over time, your home may begin to show signs of the wear and tear, both inside and out. By taking some time to work on a couple different home improvement projects, you can increase your home's value and turn it into the investment you want it to be. 

As with all investments, be sure to budget wisely. Don’t take risks you cannot afford, and remember to look for sales when buying materials for your home.

Outside the Home

When you want to put your best foot forward, you dress for success. Your home is no different, and siding is one way to dress up your home. 

According to the experts at Lifetime Exteriors, high quality siding can make a big difference in protecting your home from the elements and can also add value and curb appeal to your home. 

Brand new siding, however, can be expensive. Buying surplus is a great way to save money on materials, but even then, a massive renovation isn’t always the best course.

Instead of replacing siding, cleaning the exterior of your home can make a major difference in its look, feel, and curb appeal. 

Many DIY stores offer low cost power washer rentals, and an annual cleaning comes with the added benefit of preserving what you already have. 

Regular maintenance not only keeps your home looking nice, it makes it last longer, and, in the long run, saves you money.

Inside the Home

One of the most popular ways to increase your home's value is to add additional living space inside the home. This space can come in the form of an addition or redoing existing space to make it live-in ready. 

In addition to living spaces, like bedrooms or living rooms, kitchens and baths add a lot of value to any home and are often the first rooms buyers look at when touring a house. The bathroom and the kitchen often showcase just how well remodeling funds are spent, so taking the time to do it right the first time can really add a lot of value.

But despite how often it happens on the most popular TV shows, adding a whole new room isn’t always a good financial decision. 

As with the exterior, maintenance is usually the best option. Focus instead on preserving the value already present in your home, and don’t worry about keeping up appearances with the neighbors. 

Think instead of creative ways to use the room that you already have. Redecorate, rearrange, and repurpose existing furniture and rooms to suit your needs. A spare bedroom could become a home office. 

Cut cable and rearrange the living room to get rid of the TV—you’ll save all the money you would have spent for cable service, and you’ll have more time to be more productive.

While there are many ways to make your home into an asset—either to sell or just to make it more valuable for your own needs—make sure that proper research and steps are taken before engaging in any DIY activities. 

Just like anything worth doing, it's worth taking the time to do right. If you decide a remodel is in your budget, contact local real estate agents to get some feedback on what sells best in your area. 

By finding the best areas to focus on around the home, you can get the best resale value for your money and your time.

5 Reasons Why You Should Implement Salesforce Knowledge for Your Organization

Implementing Salesforce knowledge gives your organization a knowledge framework on which you can create and manage information to be shared with external and internal users quickly and easily. 

Whether or not you have already decided to use Salesforce Knowledge (SK) within your organization, there are many important considerations to be made before you can move forward into implementation. 

The following list provides five of these considerations and how SK fits perfectly for every need:

1. What level of control needs be exercised over the article lifecycle?

Perhaps you want to give your teams the authority to write, review, edit and publish articles for purposes of solving customer problems, but you don’t want to allow excessive leeway on the publishing process. 

You can use SK’s flexible settings on management of articles within your organization. The suite allows you to appoint article managers as well as create a customized approval process for articles of various types to allow for managerial or legal review prior to publishing. 

2. Will articles to agents from your organization need to be present in different formats?

You have many different options in the market should you want to store articles related to organizational support, but none comes close to the quality, power and customization abilities offered by SK during the creation process. 

You can create your own article templates to allow information to be fed in and presented to users according to formats that are most useful for them. SK also allows creation of article types and type layouts with which you can organize support articles. 

3. Do you have specific target audiences for specific article types?

If your organizational knowledge base can be split into subsets intended to reach out to different audiences or groups, you can use the Data Categories settings in order to feed the right information to the right audience. 

Data categories in SK provide a list of hierarchical criteria that divides articles in relevant groups. On creation, articles are grouped according to the defined categories (e.g. by region or product). 

Once the data categories have been defined and assigned to corresponding articles, users can easily find the articles they need. 

4. Do you need detailed metrics and reports on support articles published in SK?

If your intention is to not only furnish customer support executives with in-depth and quality articles, but also to monitor and produce detailed reports on the utilization of support articles for purposes of maintenance and improvement of the organization’s knowledge base, you are definitely in the right hands using Salesforce GitHub and SK.

Salesforce knowledge provides advanced settings for generation of bespoke article reports. In addition, the Knowledge Base Dashboards and Reports application can be downloaded from the AppExchange and installed. 

Using these tools; view ratings, article usage, statistics and search metrics according to role or channel to enable proactive management of organizational content.

5. Do you use multiple organizational support channels?

If you’re looking to share your articles beyond your internal support network to different channels, SK is excellent since it allows you to add up to four different sharing channels. 

Your internal users can access the knowledge base through the Salesforce CRM directly, partners and customers can use the Partner and Customer Communities for access and the Public Knowledge Base can be used to allow the general public access. 

Add-ons are available from the AppExchange.

Author bio: The author has over ten years’ experience as a customer relationship management software expert, and has written articles shared on many platforms throughout the Internet. Visit http://www.flosum.com/salesforce-data-migrator/ to learn more about data migration using Salesforce, and other relevant information.