Reviewing Your Retirement Plan: An Annual Checkup

Reviewing your retirement plan means checking, at least once a year, that your savings, investments, and goals still line up, and updating them when they do not. A plan is a living thing, not a document you file away. Markets move your investments off course, the rules change every year, and life throws events at you that no plan anticipated. A regular review is how you catch all of that before it becomes a problem, and it is the natural last step of retirement planning.

This is the habit I wish I had started decades earlier. For years I treated my retirement accounts like a slow cooker: set it and forget it. When I finally looked closely, I found old beneficiaries, an investment mix that had drifted, and contributions I could have raised. Here is how to run a review, reviewed by a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER. This is general information, not personalized advice, and your investments can lose value, so use it to build the habit rather than as instructions for your exact case.

Why an annual review matters

An annual review matters because nearly everything in your plan changes over time, even if you do nothing. The numbers that define your plan are not fixed, so a plan you never revisit slowly stops matching reality.

Consider how much shifts in a single year. Contribution limits change annually; in 2026 you can put up to $24,500 into a 401(k) and $7,500 into an IRA, and those figures move most years. Your investments rise and fall. Your Social Security estimate updates as you earn more. And tax rules, like when required minimum distributions begin (currently 73, rising to 75 in 2033), get revised. Picking a fixed date each year, say a birthday or the start of the year, turns the review into a habit instead of a someday. An hour once a year is a small price for keeping a decades-long plan on track.

Life events that should trigger a review

Beyond the annual check, any major life event should trigger a review, because these are the moments a plan quietly goes out of date. Waiting for your usual date is fine for routine drift, but big changes deserve attention right away.

Events that should prompt a fresh look:

• A new job or leaving one: a chance to handle a 401(k) rollover and reset contributions.
• Marriage or divorce: both change beneficiaries, tax filing, and Social Security options; divorce can also mean dividing retirement accounts.
• A birth or adoption: new dependents and new beneficiaries to consider.
• An inheritance: including the special rules for inherited retirement accounts.
• A serious illness or the death of a spouse: which can reshape income, including survivor benefits.

Each of these can change your income, your goals, your tax picture, and who should inherit your accounts. A quick review at the time is far easier than untangling a mismatch years later.

Rebalancing your investments

Rebalancing is resetting your investment mix back to your target after markets have pushed it off course, and it is a core reason to review. Left alone, a portfolio drifts: the parts that grow fastest come to dominate, often raising your risk without you choosing to.

Here is the idea in practice. Suppose you aimed for a mix of stocks and bonds. After a strong run, stocks might grow to a much larger share than you intended, leaving you more exposed to a downturn than you planned. Rebalancing means trimming what has grown and topping up what has lagged to return to your target. It is a disciplined way to manage risk and, in effect, to “sell high and buy low” by rule rather than by emotion. How you balance depends on your age and goals, and it interacts with inflation and the need to keep some growth for a long retirement; see how retirement accounts are invested. Remember that all of these investments can lose value, and Investor.gov is a neutral place to learn more.

Adjusting contributions and withdrawals

Each review is a chance to adjust how much you put in while working, or how much you take out once retired, as your circumstances change. A plan set years ago at one income or one spending level rarely fits forever.

If you are still saving, the questions are upward-looking:

• Can you raise your contribution rate, especially toward the higher limits or the catch-up amounts once you turn 50?
• Are you still capturing the full employer match?

If you are retired, the questions turn to drawdown:

• Is your withdrawal rate still sustainable, given how your investments and spending have changed?
• Should you adjust this year’s withdrawal up for inflation or down after a market drop, as flexible withdrawal strategies suggest?

Small annual adjustments, in either direction, keep the plan realistic and help your money last.

Keeping beneficiaries up to date

Beneficiary designations on your retirement accounts override your will, which makes keeping them current one of the most important and most overlooked tasks in any review. This is the one I would not skip under any circumstances, because the consequences of getting it wrong are severe and entirely avoidable.

Here is why it matters so much: if your 401(k) or IRA names a beneficiary, that designation generally controls who inherits the account, no matter what your will says. An old form that still names an ex-spouse, or no longer names a child born later, can send money exactly where you would not want it. So every review, confirm that the named beneficiaries on each retirement account and policy still reflect your wishes, and update them promptly after any marriage, divorce, birth, or death.

A complete review, then, is five quick passes: check your progress, rebalance your investments, adjust your contributions or withdrawals, confirm your beneficiaries, and note any life events. Much of it you can do yourself with free tools at SSA.gov and Investor.gov; for bigger or irreversible decisions, a fiduciary advisor can review the whole picture, as we cover in choosing a financial advisor. The figures here are for the current year and change annually, so confirm the latest at IRS.gov and SSA.gov as part of the habit.