MILWAUKEE — During these unprecedented times, many of us have chosen not to check our 401K accounts right now.
TMJ4 News created The Rebound Milwaukee to give you resources to help your family Make Ends Meet during this time.
We reached back out to a West Allis woman TMJ4’s Julia Fello spoke to three months ago, to see if her retirement plans have changed.
In early March, we met Karen Novinska at Drake & Associates.
She is thankful that neither she nor her husband’s jobs have been impacted by the coronavirus. She understands the effects after more than 600,000 people have filed for unemployment in Wisconsin since the pandemic began.
“There’s a lot of businesses that aren’t going to make it there’s a lot of unemployment there’s a lot of negative things going on in the economy,” said Novinska.
Financial adviser Tom Neumann heard this from other clients as well, “Clients are fearful and nervous and rightfully so they’ve spent a lot of time building up their nest egg for a future they have inside of their head.”
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Because of that uncertainty, Neumann believes you need to stay the course.
“Inflation erodes your purchasing power it erodes your capability to pay the same amount for the same goods that you’re used to.”
He says having an emergency savings is still needed, “Keeping that three to six months of savings in the bank if you fall on economic hard times you have something to fall back on.”
He is still pushing us to pay down our debts during this time.
Learning those lessons has kept Novinska on track. She is still planning to retire in five to ten years.
"Unless something changes drastically I don’t see that changing," said Novinska.
Here is your Rebound Rundown:
- Maintain a Budget
- Deal with Debt
- Boost Your Emergency Savings
- Plan for the Future
Drake & Associates has gone virtual to offer retirement ready classes. They also have a calculator to crunch the numbers to see how much money you need to live comfortably in retirement. Click here to learn more.