In our past blog posts, we've been talking about retirement: all the different factors that you need to know to plan your retirement.

So now you know, there are four things you need to plan your retirement. How do you use that to get started?

• Determine when you want to retire and how much time you have to retirement.
  If you're 40 years old today, and you want to retire at 65, you've got a good 25 years

• Decide how long your retirement is going to be.
  If you're retired at age 65, generally, you'll want to shoot for 20 to 30 years of life.

• The third thing you want to think about is, of course, how much money you need every month throughout those 30 years.
  Once you have that number, you can work backwards to decide how much of a nest egg you need at the point of retirement. Now you have a goal for that nest egg.
  If you're 40 years old today, you have the next 25 years to achieve that nest egg. Let's assume the next stage is $1 million.
  So now you know you've got the next 25 years to build your nest egg.
  So let's assume you need a nest egg of a million dollars at age 65 and you have the next 25 years to achieve it. Depending on your investment portfolio, which should preferably be in either ETFs or mutual funds generating 8 to 12% per annum. You may only need to set aside about $1,000 each month for the next 25 years to achieve a million bucks.

• Take action.
  There's no point thinking about everything and doing all the planning if you don't do it. It's your retirement.

If you need help, you can download our retirement calculator here. It's absolutely free.

And of course if you've got any questions or comments do let us know in the comments below. We'll be more than happy to answer them.