After a working lifetime of alarm clocks and meetings, you might be looking forward to a lot more unstructured time once you retire. But taking care of one more to-do list early on can set you up for a better retirement.
The following assumes you’ve already done some basic financial planning. Ideally, before you retire, you’ll create a budget, decide when to claim Social Security, settle on a sustainable withdrawal rate from your retirement funds, and figure out how you’ll cover health care expenses.