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Transferring the Farm and Creating a Retirement “Paycheck” from Farm Income and Assets

Robin Brumfield

Summary

We created an on-line guidebook that contains 10 modules about topics related to retirement planning for farm households. The topics were indicated as areas of concern by two focus groups of farmers above age 50 in New Jersey during the summer of 2008. While many farmers never plan to retire, our goals were to help farmers generate adequate retirement income (i.e., helping farmers make their businesses more profitable so they earn more money to save for retirement) and to create a retirement “paycheck” (i.e., helping farmers convert illiquid assets into cash and plan sustainable asset withdrawals so that savings lasts a lifetime). The overall objective of the modules is to increase the financial security of farmers in later life. Along with investment asset allocation and prudent retirement asset withdrawals to reduce the risk of outliving one’s assets, crop insurance is presented as a risk management and wealth accumulation technique. Like all older workers facing retirement within the next 15 years, many farmers are also making up for lost time and need to learn strategies to jumpstart their savings. Some of the modules are new while others link to other websites and do not “reinvent the wheel.”

Details

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