Can

As a professional courtesy, an employee who will soon be retiring should submit a retirement letter to his immediate supervisor, even if the supervisor has been informed of the employee's pending retirement verbally. It is a standard business practice to put this in writing so that the notification of retirement can be filed in the employee's personnel file.

A retirement letter should be submitted at least six weeks in advance. This gives the company ample notice should someone from outside of the company need to be hired and trained to take the place of the retiring employee.

The format of a standard retirement letter is as follows:

The first paragraph should state the most important fact: The employee is writing to inform his employer that he is retiring. The retirement date should be stated in the first paragraph of this correspondence.

The second paragraph should communicate thanks and appreciation for the opportunity to work for the company. Acknowledge those who have helped you, and include people at all levels in the company. You'll be surprised at how many people to whom you are indebted.

In the third paragraph, state your willingness and even eagerness to ensure a smooth transition, specifically for your successor and for the company in general. Losing a long-term knowledgeable employee can be difficult, even disruptive. Assurance from you can go a long way to make this as easy a transition as possible.

This is all you need to include in your retirement letter. However, optional paragraphs may be added to include the following:

If you wish to continue working for the company as an outside contractor, either on a part-time or full-time basis, include a fourth paragraph stating this objective.

In a fifth paragraph, you can summarize the highlights of your career, quantifying how you have specifically helped the company. Perhaps you developed a certain system that helped the company to save money or time. For example: When I arrived, the sales reps and Production Department personnel were at odds with one another. I made it my mission to improve communications by creating mandatory Monday meetings in which the sales reps communicated what the customers wanted, and Production personnel told us what and how we could deliver that to our customers. This improved customer satisfaction 35% and sales went up 13% in the first year after its implementation.

In a sixth and final paragraph, summarize your goodwill toward your fellow co-workers, supervisors, and managers.

As you can see, writing a retirement letter is a piece of cake...retirement cake, that is.

Writing retirement letters is not a hard thing to do when you have a template and samples to follow. At RetirementLettersandSpeeches you will find samples of retirement letters and speeches, as well as a retirement letter format, template, and information about etiquette. Full body samples of retirement letters and speeches are given; best of all, this is free information.

E! Online - Heath Ledger might get an Oscar nod for his agent of chaos in The Dark Knight.

One of the concerns in a volatile financial markets is, what should be done with my retirement account fund allocations?

Keep an eye on the prime rate set by the Federal Reserve Bank and the stock market indexes such as Dow, NASDAQ, and S&P 500.

As the prime interest rate increases , the beginning of credit tightening begins and the increasing in interest rates starts. Stocks will slowly go down, bonds yield will increase but the principal will decline at a more rapid rate resulting in investment loss. Interest will increase on loans and delayed increase on rates for savings.

The stock market indexes will decline and so will the funds in retirement accounts. One option is to transfer all or part of the balance to the money market account to stop any loss and wait for the downward trend to change.

Retirement accounts such as a 401(k) for profit companies, 403 (b) for non-profit companies, 408(a) Individual Retirement Account and 457 Deferred Compensation are long term retirement investments that take advantage of the time value of money.

An investment company (fiduciary) buys and sells investments from the securities market for the different fund allocations in the plan.

In addition, the fiduciary provides an account report quarterly and annually. Your account should be accessible over the internet by using your access code and password. This will give you current account information and the historical performance of each llocation.

You should be able to check past dates as to the balance of your account to check how the funds have performed. Be sure to check your account every quarter and review the fund allocations for per- formance.

A retirement account starts in the growth phase and over the years transitions to the conservation phase. An account with interest income will keep up with inflation and very little actual growth. Bonds will perform over time about 2% more than money market. Equities should yield 4 to 6% growth over inflation.

When retirement is on the horizon reduce high risk allocations and select funds with less risk. Keep you selections diversified by using 6 to 8 account allocations. Rule of thumb, when the fee charged by the investment company is in the 1.25 to 2% range the portfolio has high turnover and is higher risk. Stay in the .80% to 1.2 range or lower to moderate the risk.

In a recovering market, take the opposite action and return your allocations to the equity funds. The market makes most of its money in a six week period during the year. Take some time to give this matter a little attention.

More to come in the next Make Money Work newsletter.

To your financial success,

Martin Braddock

P.S If you have any friends or family that may be interested in making money work harder have them contact my website: http://www.makemoneywork.info for more information. E-A115 584

Contact the Author

Martin Braddock - martin@makemoneywork.info

Martin Braddock with 23 years of financial planning experience can give you expert advice and the best plans for your financial future in one shot. With the commission selling removed, you get honesty advice and the best financial care that you can possibly have.

E! Online - Isabel Lucas may have earned herself a slave for life on the Transformers 2 set.