Supplemental retirement income can save your retirement

All the recent talk in the news about an economic downturn has added more fuel to the retirement savings discussion. As the cost of living continues to rise, it is becoming increasingly difficult to survive on a fixed income. You will likely need some other retirement income.

A report came out this morning from the American Association of Health Care Administrators saying that 60% of people turning 65 this year can be expected to require long-term care at some point in the rest of their lives! When you combine that with the average annual cost of a private nursing home room of $77,745, the problem is compounded.

Many people hope that once they are 65, Medicare will cover the cost of long-term care. It’s just not like that! Medicare only covers the cost of medical care and prescription drugs, not the cost of assisted living or nursing home care. This is why everyone should consider a long-term care insurance policy, after age 50. The sooner you take out an LTC policy, the less expensive the policy will be.

With all these financial pressures on a person’s retirement budget, you really need to think about finding a good source of supplemental retirement income. It doesn’t have to make you a fortune, but wouldn’t it be nice to have an extra $1,000 to $2,000 a month to supplement your Social Security and pension income? Well, it’s easier than you think to make that happen, if you have any business knowledge.

Whether you write articles or eBooks, create art or crafts, or just do affiliate marketing, it should require almost no investment to set up a complementary income stream.

Internet marketing is very simple! Now note that I didn’t say it’s easy; in fact, it will take dedicated effort and considerable time to learn internet marketing skills and start receiving income checks.

You can very easily get started by signing up as an “Affiliate” of a person or business that has a product or products to sell. It would be good to select products in a market niche that interests you particularly. Then you’ll need to do some market research to find the best terms or “keywords” to use in marketing your affiliate product.

Once you’ve done that, you can easily set up an advertising campaign on Google (called “AdWords”) to attract customers to buy the product. As they shop, you earn a nice commission (usually 40% or more for books, mp3 audios, and videos delivered electronically) for doing your marketing. The cost of doing such a marketing campaign is really very small, but you can earn a few hundred dollars per month from this activity. Once you have set it up, it will continue to generate more income every month in the future. You can then work to improve your ads and close rates to improve your first effort.

Once you’re familiar with affiliate marketing, you may want to move on to developing your own product (a book, audio, or video) on the topic of your passion and marketing it directly. In such a setup, you get to keep all the proceeds from the sale and this can be very lucrative.

If you’re worried about your retirement finances, consider developing some supplemental retirement income streams for yourself!