Here are my top 6 retirement plans that are doomed to fail! You would be surprised how often I hear them:

1. Assuming that your spouse will agree to your grand plan of downsizing the family home or moving to a different area on retirement.

2. Assuming that your parents will leave you an inheritance. Think nursing home costs, reverse mortgages, multiple cruises, a late blooming romance.

3. Worse –assuming your spouse’s parents will leave your spouse an inheritance, which they in turn will want to share with you.

4. Hoping fervently that the $10k you have invested in an obscure, speculative mining stock will suddenly make you a millionaire.

5. Assuming that your kids will get rich and keep you in your old age. How much do you give your parents now?

6. Relying on a government pension. With an ageing population, there will be nothing left by the time we get there. The current system will be unsustainable.

So what should you do?

Accept the fact that the money you earn over your working life, of say 30 years, needs to last at least twice that long.

With that in mind PLAN, SAVE & INVEST.