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HOW TO KNOW IF YOU’RE READY TO RETIRE Eric Brotman, Forbes.com Retiring is a huge life event, and it isn’t one that comes with many do-overs.

You have to get it right the first time.

Luckily, there are ways to prepare for retirement—and even practice it—to help ensure you’re ready when the day comes.

What to do first A few years before you plan to retire, have a practice run. If you have a retirement plan that gives you a clear picture of how much money you’ll have to live on annually, spend a full year to two years living only on that amount. If you don’t, your first step is to meet with a financial advisor to get sense of your retirement income estimate.

If you can live comfortably on the decided amount, that’s great. If not, it’s better to know that now rather than later, and it’s time to devise a plan to increase your future income.

Have a timeline for your decisions Do you know when you must make certain retirement-related decisions? Do you even know what decisions you’ll need to make? Having a clear idea of these decisions and a timeline to make them will reduce your stress and make retirement a smoother event.

Pre-retirement decisions Before you retire, you’ll need to determine if you have any debts that need to be refinanced. It’s hard to refinance mortgages or other loans when you don’t have demonstrable income, so do this long before you give notice at work.

You’ll also need to decide how you’ll handle long-term care expenses and if you want to use long term care insurance for some of those potential costs.

Applying for this insurance should ideally be done ten years prior to retiring, and three to five years before is basically the last chance for it to be affordable.

Retirement day decisions Retiring likely means losing your employer-sponsored benefits, so you’ll need to make decisions about health insurance. If you’re retiring at or after age 65, then you can seamlessly transition into Medicare. Make sure you remember to enroll in Medicare Part A 60 to 90 days before your 65th birthday whether you’re planning to retire or not. For Part B, you can wait to enroll until after 8