Ten years can feel like plenty of time—until retirement is only a decade away.

During your working years, retirement planning often centers on one straightforward goal: save more. But as retirement gets closer, the questions become more complicated. How much income will you actually need? Where will that income come from? When should you consider Social Security? How could taxes affect your withdrawals? What happens if markets decline shortly before or after you retire?

And then there are health care, Medicare, inflation, estate planning, and the possibility of living in retirement for decades.

If you’re within approximately 10 years of retirement, now is a valuable time to move from general saving to a more detailed retirement planning strategy. The decisions made during this period can shape how prepared you are when your regular paycheck eventually stops.

Here’s what to examine when determining whether your retirement plan is ready for the decade ahead.

1. Define What Retirement Actually Looks Like

Before analyzing account balances, think about the life those accounts need to support.

“Retirement” can mean very different things to different people.

Some envision traveling extensively. Others want to stay close to home, spend time at the lake, volunteer, pursue hobbies, or help with grandchildren. Some people leave the workforce completely, while others continue consulting or working part-time.

Your desired lifestyle affects your financial retirement plan.

Start asking practical questions:

• At what age would you like to retire?
• Where do you expect to live?
• Will you still have a mortgage?
• Do you anticipate traveling frequently?
• Will you work part-time?
• Do you plan to financially support children or grandchildren?
• Are major purchases or renovations likely?
• What does an enjoyable ordinary month in retirement look like?

The clearer the vision, the easier it becomes to estimate what supporting it may require.

2. Take Inventory of Your Retirement Savings

Next, determine exactly where you stand today.

Retirement assets may be spread across several accounts accumulated throughout a career, including 401(k)s, 403(b)s, IRAs, Roth IRAs, pensions, investment accounts, and plans from previous employers.

Create a complete inventory rather than focusing only on your current workplace plan.

For each account, identify its approximate value, investment allocation, beneficiary designation, tax treatment, and any applicable fees or restrictions.

Then examine your current savings rate.

For 2026, employees can contribute up to $24,500 to most 401(k), 403(b), and governmental 457 plans. People age 50 and older may qualify for additional catch-up contributions, and special catch-up provisions apply to certain participants ages 60 through 63.

The final decade before retirement may offer an important opportunity to increase savings, especially if major expenses such as college tuition or a mortgage have decreased.

3. Build a Retirement Income Planning Strategy

Accumulating assets is only part of retirement planning. Eventually, those assets need to help produce income.

That transition deserves careful preparation.

Potential retirement income sources could include:

• Social Security
• Employer pensions
• 401(k) or 403(b) accounts
• Traditional and Roth IRAs
• Investment accounts
• Annuities
• Rental income
• Business income
• Part-time employment
• Other financial assets

Rather than asking only, “How much have I saved?” begin asking, “How will my income work?”

Identify Fixed and Flexible Expenses

Start separating expected retirement expenses into essential and discretionary categories.

Essential expenses might include housing, utilities, groceries, insurance, transportation, taxes, and health care.

Flexible spending could include travel, entertainment, hobbies, gifts, and other lifestyle choices.

Understanding both categories can make your retirement income planning more realistic and help you see how much dependable income may be needed to cover core expenses.

4. Understand Your Social Security Options

For many retirees, Social Security becomes an important part of retirement income.

But the amount you receive can vary based on your earnings record and when you claim benefits.

As retirement approaches, review your Social Security earnings history and estimated benefits rather than relying on assumptions.

Your Social Security account can provide personalized estimates based on your earnings and show how different claiming ages may affect estimated benefits.

Social Security should then be considered alongside other sources of retirement income.

The objective isn’t to examine Social Security in isolation. It’s to understand how it fits within your complete retirement strategy.

For married couples, planning may become even more important because both spouses’ benefits, retirement dates, ages, income sources, and longevity assumptions can influence household planning.

5. Prepare for Taxes in Retirement

One commonly overlooked part of preparing for retirement is taxes.

Having $1 million in retirement accounts doesn’t necessarily mean you have $1 million available to spend.

Different accounts can receive different tax treatment.

Traditional retirement account withdrawals are generally taxable, while qualified Roth distributions may receive different treatment. Investment accounts, pensions, Social Security benefits, and other income sources can introduce additional tax considerations.

This is where tax diversification can become relevant.

Having retirement resources with different tax characteristics may provide additional flexibility when deciding where income comes from in retirement.

Innovative Legacy Solutions includes Tax Diversification Planning among its Individual Solutions and Tax-Free Retirement Planning among its Legacy Solutions.

The final decade before retirement provides time to evaluate how taxes may affect future income rather than discovering the impact after withdrawals begin.

Tax strategies can be highly individual, so tax-specific decisions should be coordinated with a qualified tax professional.

6. Make Health Care Part of Minnesota Retirement Planning

Health care can become one of the largest variables in retirement.

If you plan to retire before becoming eligible for Medicare, determine how health insurance would work during the gap between employer coverage and Medicare eligibility.

If Medicare eligibility is approaching, begin learning how Medicare fits into your overall plan.

Your retirement health care planning may need to account for:

• Medicare premiums
• Supplemental or alternative coverage
• Prescription drug expenses
• Dental care
• Vision care
• Hearing services
• Out-of-pocket medical expenses
• Potential long-term care needs

Health care shouldn’t be treated as a miscellaneous expense in a retirement budget.

For Minnesota retirement planning, it deserves its own discussion because health needs, insurance choices, retirement timing, and financial resources can all interact.

7. Review Investment Risk Before Retirement

Someone 30 years from retirement may view market volatility very differently from someone three years away.

As your timeline changes, your investment strategy deserves review.

This doesn’t necessarily mean becoming extremely conservative as retirement approaches. Retirement itself could last 20, 30, or more years, meaning part of your portfolio may still have a long investment horizon.

Instead, evaluate whether your current risk level remains appropriate.

Consider:

• How diversified is your portfolio?
• How much volatility can you financially tolerate?
• How much volatility can you emotionally tolerate?
• When will you begin withdrawing money?
• How much liquid savings do you maintain?
• Has market performance changed your intended asset allocation?

A market decline shortly before or early in retirement can be particularly challenging when withdrawals are also occurring.

Building flexibility into your retirement strategy may reduce the pressure to make major financial decisions during periods of market uncertainty.

8. Plan for Inflation and Longevity

Your first year of retirement isn’t the only year your plan needs to support.

A retirement beginning in your 60s could potentially last decades.

Over that period, inflation can reduce purchasing power. Expenses that seem manageable at retirement may cost substantially more many years later.

Longevity also increases the importance of maintaining a long-term perspective.

Your plan should consider whether income and assets could reasonably support:

• Increasing living expenses
• Rising health care costs
• Home repairs
• Vehicle replacements
• Unexpected emergencies
• Changing lifestyle needs
• A surviving spouse

A strong financial retirement plan shouldn’t work only under ideal conditions. It should have enough flexibility to respond when life doesn’t follow the original forecast.

9. Coordinate Retirement With Estate and Legacy Planning

Retirement planning and estate planning shouldn’t exist in separate worlds.

As you approach retirement, review wills, trusts, powers of attorney, health care directives, beneficiary designations, and other estate documents.

Beneficiary designations deserve particular attention because retirement accounts and insurance policies may transfer according to those designations.

This is also a good time to consider your broader legacy.

Do you want to leave assets to children or grandchildren? Support a charitable organization? Transfer a business? Preserve property for future generations?

For business owners, the 10-year retirement window may be especially important.

Selling or transitioning a business can require years of preparation. Business valuation, succession planning, ownership transfer, taxes, insurance, and estate planning may all need to be coordinated well before the planned retirement date.

10. Stress-Test Your Retirement Plan

A retirement projection can look reassuring when every assumption works perfectly.

Real life rarely does.

Consider what would happen if:

• Retirement occurs earlier than planned
• Inflation remains elevated
• Markets decline near retirement
• Health care expenses increase
• You live longer than expected
• A spouse dies
• Your housing plans change
• You need to help a family member financially

You don’t need a plan that predicts every possible event.

You need one that can adapt.

That’s one reason retirement planning shouldn’t be a one-time calculation. Reviewing the strategy regularly allows you to adjust savings, spending, investments, income planning, and other decisions as circumstances change.

Create a 10-Year Retirement Planning Timeline

Instead of treating retirement as a distant finish line, break the next decade into manageable stages.

Around 10 years out: Define retirement goals, estimate expenses, inventory assets, evaluate savings rates, and identify significant gaps.

Five to nine years out: Continue strengthening savings, evaluate tax diversification, review investment risk, consider debt reduction, and refine income projections.

Two to four years out: Develop a more detailed retirement budget, review Social Security estimates, explore Medicare and health insurance decisions, and map potential income sources.

The final year: Confirm benefit elections, establish an initial withdrawal strategy, review cash reserves, update estate documents and beneficiaries, and understand how the transition away from employment will affect insurance and income.

This timeline isn’t universal, but it demonstrates an important principle: preparing for retirement is a process, not an event.

Final Thoughts: Is Your Retirement Plan Ready?

Being 10 years from retirement provides something incredibly valuable: time.

There is still time to increase savings, refine your investment strategy, prepare for taxes, evaluate future income, understand Social Security, plan for health care, reduce debt, and coordinate your estate and legacy goals.

But those opportunities become more useful when they’re addressed intentionally.

A strong retirement planning strategy isn’t simply about reaching a particular account balance. It’s about understanding how your assets, income, taxes, insurance, health care, risk, and personal goals work together.

The next decade may bring changes in markets, tax rules, health, family circumstances, and personal priorities. Your retirement plan should be flexible enough to evolve with them.

Rather than asking whether your plan can perfectly predict the next 10 years, ask a better question:

Is your retirement strategy prepared to adapt to them?

Contact Us

Innovative Legacy Solutions works with individuals, families, and business owners across areas including retirement strategies, tax diversification planning, wealth preservation, Medicare, estate planning and preservation, annuities, and legacy planning.

Innovative Legacy Solutions
2401 Goldfinch Lane
Buffalo, MN 55313

Office: (763) 639-3774
Hours: Monday–Friday, 9:00 AM–5:00 PM CST