How much time have you spent planning your future? Is your life plan aligned with your personal goals and values? Is your financial plan in sync with your life plan?

Admittedly these are heavy questions, but they do remind us that retirement isn’t something that will happen to us, it’s something we are accountable for planning, financing, and ultimately, living. We hope that this month’s newsletter will inspire you to get excited about planning the next phase of your life.

As part of its commitment to helping you make the most of your retirement, this month BMO is launching BMO Retirement Institute. The BMO Retirement Institute searches for and selects the best of publicly available, world class research on issues of interest to boomers as they approach retirement, and brings it to you in a straightforward format called Connecting Insights.

Life planning is a process in which you asses your values, explore your dreams, gain insight into what you see for your retirement and finally, set some goals. It draws on many areas of life including family, financial, personal fulfillment, mental, physical, and spiritual well-being. Once defined, a life plan will provide you with the framework onto which you can layer a financial plan.

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BMO brings academic retirement research to life

As part of its commitment to helping you make the most of your retirement, this month BMO is launching BMO Retirement Institute. The BMO Retirement Institute searches for and selects the best of publicly available, world class research on issues of interest to boomers as they approach retirement, and brings it to you in a straightforward format called Connecting Insights.

The first Connecting Insights article, "Assuming More Responsibility for Retirement" examines the prospect of future retirees having to shoulder more financial responsibility for their retirement than previous generations. It highlights the important retirement decisions boomers will face and offers options and research on the effectiveness of some of today’s financial planning products.

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