I met with a client a couple of weeks ago just to go over what she has and review her income situation. She worked a normal job all of her life making decent money but saved just about everything that she made. She is what we often call a "Middle Class Millionaire". As we were finishing up she said something that will probably stick with me a long time, "Where was all of this money in my 20s and 30s?" Let me explain the background a little deeper. When we set up her plan she had some money from he pension, her social security and we planned on pulling from some of the other accounts that she had to supplement the rest of the income she would need to meet her income gap. The thing is, she has money because she is a good saver so even though we aloud for extra income for the fun stuff she wanted to do in retirement, she just was never able to give herself permission to actually use it on fun stuff. Fast forward to now, her health is fading and she isn't going to really be able to do the things she maybe had thought about but was unable to actually schedule to do. I probably have 20 stories just like this one that could share but I really want to drive home the point of planning and remembering that its important to not only plan but also to give yourself permission to do the things that you spent all those years planning to do.
Often People get hung up on the current economy, market and political conditions. Obviously these conditions effect your retirement, but its important to remember that "you can only control what you can control".