This article appears as part of Casey Weade's Weekend Reading for Retirees series. Every Friday, Casey highlights four hand-picked articles on trending retirement topics and delivers them straight to your email inbox. Get on the list here.

The power of three: To simplify the complexity of retirement planning, here you’ll find three essential elements, which can help steer you toward a financially independent future:

📌#1 – Proactive accumulation: This means spending your working years saving, investing and doing so with a tax efficient, diversified mindset. Strategically dividing your savings into three buckets (taxable accounts, tax-deferred accounts and tax-free accounts) can help provide you with more control and distribution options as you enter your second act.

📌#2 – Smart investment strategy: As you continue to grow your savings and near retirement, modifying your strategy and diversifying your assets is key. This often includes fixed income investments for obtaining a secure, reliable stream of income that lasts your lifetime.

📌#3 – Tax-efficient distribution: When determining where to draw your income from in retirement, you should also assess tax liability. Evaluate your expenses, look at the income you have available and gauge the tax impact of pulling from assets you’ve accumulated. This will all depend on your tax bracket, and how much is needed to cover your cost of living.

Plan purposefully: Intentionality coupled with a common-sense process is what your financial plan needs to succeed. How many nickels have you dropped over the years that could have stayed in your pocket if you were intentional, and followed a process along the way?