Planning for your retirement involves a variety of important decisions, many of which are financial. For example, you’ll need a plan for saving money, managing your investments, paying for healthcare, and budgeting for leisure activities. However, today’s world also requires integrating technology into your retirement planning budget.
Tech, no matter how small, should be a fundamental part of your retirement budget. Which tech you use will depend on your individual circumstances, but overall, embracing technology can make retirement easier and more fun, whether you’re managing your finances online or video chatting with your family.
Technology will keep you connected to loved ones
After working your whole life, retirement will put you in a position where you don’t have any obligation to leave the house or meet with people. Without a daily routine, you’ll be spending more time at home by default.
The last thing you want to do is become isolated in retirement. Unfortunately, a lot of retirees end up isolating themselves unintentionally. If you’re not constantly engaged in something you love, like tennis, golf, or playing music with your friends, you’re going to spend less time socializing and you might stop reaching out to others.
Technology can help you maintain a social life, even if you don’t want to leave the house. For example, your smartphone or tablet can be used to talk to friends and family through video. This will help you stay connected to the people you love, no matter how far away they live.
Social media is another good way to stay connected to the people in your life. If you don’t want to take a phone call, you can send an email or message them through Facebook.
The internet is fundamental to the tech world
If you’re going to use technology, you will need the internet. When budgeting for monthly expenses, if you’re looking for things to cancel, don’t cut your internet. If you adopt smart home technology, you’ll need an internet connection for everything to work. It’s also a great way to save money on long-distance calls and is sometimes faster than your mobile phone carrier’s service.
Keeping your home internet connection when you retire is especially important if you don’t have the internet on your phone, or if your plan has limited data.
The internet can help you find new hobbies
Most people have at least one hobby they enjoy more than anything, but in retirement, you might get bored and need a new source of stimulation. It’s easy to find new hobbies online, whether you’re searching Reddit, Google, or specialized content on YouTube.
Once you find an activity you like, it should be easy to learn more about it from those same resources. YouTube is especially helpful for how-to content and DIY instructions. For example, if you’ve always wanted to try working with leather, one search on YouTube will provide you with plenty of content about how to get started and follow-along tutorials.
Unplanned tech purchases can get expensive
Another good reason to plan for tech in your retirement budget is to avoid the cost of making unplanned purchases. No matter what you buy, if it’s not accounted for, it’s going to impact your finances. If you have more than enough to absorb the cost, it’s not going to hurt you right away, but multiple unplanned purchases might.
Say you decide to buy a new iPhone 16. That’s going to cost you at least $1,000 or more, depending on the model you choose. iPhone 16 cases are affordable and necessary, but it will be another expense.
If the only impulse buy you make is a gadget, like an iPhone 16, that’s not too big of a deal, but if you’re buying multiple things – especially products that require a subscription – your expenses can get quite large. The average American pays more than $924 per year for subscription services and has more than four total subscriptions. That’s just the average. Many people have far more subscriptions when they engage in various hobbies. The problem is that subscriptions only seem like a little bit of money here and there, but they add up fast.
Some of the most common impulse tech buys include:
- Subscription-based software
- Fitness watches
- Accessories, like the Apple Pencil
- Tablets
- Subscription streaming television services and cable TV channels
- DVD rentals from Redbox and similar machines in stores
- In-app purchases
- In-game purchases
- Upsells when buying digital products from websites
- Buying the latest phone model
Instead of allowing yourself to make impulse tech purchases, incorporate tech into your retirement budget. It can be a monthly expense that you ignore and let roll over to the next month in case you want to buy something more expensive, or it can be a simple budget you set that covers your basic monthly subscriptions. Either way, budgeting for tech will prevent you from spending too much impulsively.
Technology can help you stay independent in your home
Something many retirees dread is having to move into a nursing home, but it’s a possibility. As of 2023, 1.3 million adults aged 65 and older were living in nursing homes. Additionally, 818,800 were living in assisted living facilities. Even if you’re completely healthy right now, all it takes is one accident where you end up being unable to care for yourself.
If you ever need frequent or continual care, there’s usually no other option. If you don’t have someone to take care of you at home or you can’t afford in-home care from an independent care provider, your family won’t want you to be in an unsafe environment. However, there are some situations where technology can help.
Smart home tech makes life easy
Sometimes people end up in nursing homes because they can’t safely perform daily tasks, like cooking or answering the door while their caregivers are at work. However, many retirees are using smart home tech to make their lives easier. For example, they’re using it to remotely answer the door, turn the stove off automatically if they forget, turn lights on and off, set the thermostat temperature without getting up, play music, and talk to family and friends. There are also apps for family members/POAs to remotely monitor financial activity since the elderly are especially prone to getting caught up in scams.
Although it’s great for people with limited mobility, you don’t need mobility issues to benefit from smart home tech. You can be completely independent and still enjoy the benefits of being able to turn all the lights off from your favorite armchair. Imagine getting comfortable for the night, settling down with your favorite movie and snack, and then realizing you left the lights on in the other room. If you have a smart lighting system, you won’t have to move.
As a bonus, smart thermostats can help you save on your heating and cooling costs, which is an excellent use of technology.
Technology can help with daily care
If you’re able to pay for your caregiving expenses out of pocket, you have more options than what the state will provide. This means you can pay your friends and family for their help and fill in the gaps with independent providers.
With a tech budget during retirement, you can make sure the loved ones caring for you have all the tech they need to stay in contact with you or check in on you. For example, if you install a smart lock system in your home and grant them access through the app, they’ll be able to unlock the door remotely for someone in an emergency.
Virtual medical visits are a breeze
Getting ready to go to a doctor’s appointment can be a hassle, even if you’re able to get around easily. If you don’t drive, you’ll have to arrange for transportation. Thankfully, many providers offer televisits that you can attend from the comfort of your own home. Often, virtual visits are slightly cheaper than in-person visits.
Ever since the pandemic, Medicare started covering virtual doctor visits and private insurance companies followed suit. Although it was meant to be temporary, it ended up being long-term for many providers.
To take advantage of virtual healthcare visits, you’ll need a smartphone or tablet and an internet connection. These should be included in your basic tech budget.
Medical alert tech can save your life
No matter how careful you are, if you’re not completely steady on your feet, falling is a possibility. Sometimes it happens out of nowhere when you lose your balance unexpectedly, and if you hurt yourself badly enough that you can’t get up, you’ll be thankful you have a medical alert device.
The simplest device is one you wear around your neck and when you push the button, it alerts the company to send emergency response personnel to your home. There is a monthly fee for this service, but your safety and peace of mind are worth the cost. If you need to be frugal about what monthly expenses you keep, a medical alert system should be your priority.
New technology can be fun
Nobody retires just so they can watch grass grow all day. Chances are, you want to be engaged in something fun and exciting and technology can fulfill that need. For example, you might explore the world of virtual reality by getting Apple’s VR Glasses and trying out various games and worlds. VR can be extremely addicting, but it’s also innovative and fun.
If you have younger family members, they’ll probably know about all sorts of video games you can play either on a console or your computer. Or, if you don’t want to buy any new equipment, you can play certain console games on your phone and connect it to your TV for a better viewing experience.
If you aren’t interested in playing video games or getting lost in virtual worlds, there are plenty of simple ways to have fun with technology. Maybe you like to sing and you want to get a karaoke machine, or perhaps you’ve always wanted to have surround sound in your home. Sometimes it’s the simple things that make the biggest difference.
Tech can help with medical monitoring
Technology has come a long way, and now there are wearable devices you can get to monitor your health. For example, wearables can monitor your pulse, blood pressure, heart rate, blood glucose levels, and other important health metrics. When you monitor your health at home, your doctor has access to the data and will determine if they think you need to come in for a visit. This can eliminate the number of routine visits you make in person just to get those same vitals checked in the office.
Monitoring your health with technology is not a substitute for seeing your doctor in-person, but it will eliminate unnecessary visits. Sometimes these wearable health tracking devices are covered by insurance companies, but if not, they’re fairly affordable, so don’t forget to budget for them if you think it will help.
Start budgeting for technology in retirement
Embracing technology isn’t just about staying trendy. Rather, it’s about benefiting from useful tools that can empower you to live a fulfilling life. While some tech will make life fun and convenient, other technologies can help you manage your daily life and health while you age in place at home. If you don’t already have one, add a technology component to your retirement budget today.
