Soon-to-Be Retirees: 5 Things You Should Do

The nation's financial woes have those close to retirement fearful about what all the turbulence means for them and their futures. Robert Pagliarini, author of "The Six Day Financial Makeover," offer five tips on what soon-to-be retirees can do ensure their financial futures are less bleak in the midst of the credit crisis and global market trouble.

Check out his tips below.

Salvage Your Investments

With every day and every 100-point drop, people are thinking that they won't be able to retire in the next couple of years as planned. What you have to do and do it immediately is to protect your investments. Depending on where you are and how close you are to retirement here is specifically what you need to do.

Pagliarini recommends that whether you are in retirement or it is a few years away, you should immediately put five years of living expenses in cash and put this in a money market account. Once you do this, then you should allocate your remaining investments as follows:

If You're in Retirement:

35 percent stocks
65 percent bonds

If You're Two to Three Years Away From Retirement:

45 percent stocks
55 percent bonds

Make a Budget

That's extremely important now. What you need to do is list out all your monthly expenses and see which ones are the real priorities, the ones that you have to spend money on. And then look at the other ones, the ones that are maybe a little more negotiable and check off the ones that are more negotiable and see if you really need to spend money on those things.

Turn a Hobby into Income

So many people think that when they retire their income has to stop and that's not necessarily the case. What you can do is if you have a hobby, you have a passion, something you're really interested in ask yourself "Could I possibly make money from it?"

For example one person is a mechanic on airplanes and will be retiring soon. He's happy to retire but would like to make some extra money. He's thinking about starting a part-time handyman business. Another friend was an interior decorator before she retired. She loves arranging flowers and is going to work at a florist a few days a week.

If you love surfing the Internet and are good on the computer, there is a huge need for virtual assistants and online researchers. You can work from home and make $15 to $50 an hour.