Planning Retirement

If you want a secure retirement, you need to predict how much you will spend on retirement expenses. Some might say that trying to predict your costs for every month for the next 15-30 years is preposterously impossible.  However, it is probably no surprise to tell you that the closer …

Knowing you are eligible for Medicare at age 65 may give you some peace of mind about retirement health care costs, but you may be surprised to find out that you’ll still be paying a lot out of pocket. While Medicare premiums are fairly predictable, tests and procedures and that …

Retiring early is a dream for many Americans, but one that few are sure they’ll be able to reach. About half of Americans retire early — between the ages of 61 and 65. (that’s a full five to six years before full retirement age as defined by the Social Security …

On your marks, get set…. RETIRE!  If you are in your 50s or 60s, you are probably a pre retiree — someone getting ready to retire.  You are about to step into the starting blocks and race for the finish line. Here are 12 things pre retirees can do now …

Most of us have done some kind of retirement planning activities.  In fact, according to a recent study from Vanguard, only 1 out of 10 pre and recent retirees have not done any planning at all. However, not everyone is tackling the same retirement planning tasks and few of us …

Reaching age 65 once meant collecting a final paycheck. But today, more Americans are trying to delay retirement — working well into the traditional retirement years, not because they have to, but because they want to. According to the Pew Research Center, in 2016, 18.8% of Americans age 65 and …

There is no shortage of lists and articles about the best places to retire.  These lists are fun.  However, they sometimes feel random and not all that practical or useful for figuring out where to spend this phase of your life. For example, did you know that Jimmy Buffett is …

Age is just a number.  In fact, even the word “old” means less and less these days as many of us stay healthy and active well past the traditional retirement age of 65.  Is 80 the new 40?  Or, is 100 a better benchmark age for enjoying life and achieving …

Figuring out if you can retire securely can sometimes feel like the most complicated word problem ever.  Just figuring out which retirement number to worry about can be perplexing.  And then there is the further complication of knowing how they all fit together. Here is your guide to the 11 …

We have A LOT of choices for where to invest our money — both before and after retirement.  Some options are clearly bad investments. Others seem like a good bet, but probably aren’t. While we would all like to find a shortcut to massive wealth, the steady approach is probably …