Category: Financial and taxes in retirement
September 9, 2015 -- Have you been wondering how your retirement income stacks up to that of other retired people in your situation. Or whether it will be enough to provide your pre-retirement lifestyle? Well, thanks to the almost 1500 community-minded members who took the time to contribute their valuable data and insights to last week's "How Much Do You Expect to Receive in Retirement" survey, now you will know. If you didn't complete it you owe these folks a big thank you.
As promised, here is a detailed report on what the survey turned up. It includes links to hundreds of individual comments to various questions on the survey. Those include the one about your retirement budget preparations, and how confident you are that the income level you EXPECT to receive will be enough to maintain your pre-retirement standard of living. You will find a list of our previous survey reports at the end of the article.
Background
This is the first time we have asked you for data about your retirement income expectations, and how that agrees with what you think you will need. We were also intrigued with the question about whether you intend to move out of state, and if finances are related to that
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Published on September 8, 2015
Comments 17
Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
September 15, 2015 -- Lists of great places to retire are a commonplace these days - but it is novel to see one which includes places that haven't been mentioned before. Money has done just that with their list of "Best Places to Retire for 2015". Their complete list has 25 great towns; we are going to review the Top 10 on the list here. We like how they described the list: "These 25 towns offer a wealth of opportunities for enjoying your life after work—without cracking your nest egg".
The Money list has different categories - Best places for the arts, best places for the outdoors, best places for golf. One of the main attributes of the list was that the towns should not be prohibitively expensive. None of them are that, although many feature a median cost of home that is at or near the national median ($229,400 according to the National Association of Realtors® in 2015's 2nd Q). Some of these towns have been on various Topretirements.com lists before - many have not! Click on the name of the town to see
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Published on September 14, 2015
Comments 25
Category: Financial and taxes in retirement
September 21, 2015 -- We thought this topic would be easy. Do some basic research, then come up with a list of the worst states for taxes on retirement. But after looking at the research we had to say - not so fast! There are so many considerations depending on your individual circumstances that any cut and dried, one size fits all approach is not going to be useful. All of these factors, for example, will have a major effect on your tax bill from one state to another: your income, the value of your home, the type of retirement income you get (and where it comes from), and whether you file singly or jointly. Yet we will try to come up with such a list, thinking of a prototypical couple that might, or might not, be similar to your situation. In this case we are focusing on worst states for retirement income taxes, and ignoring other taxes like those on property.
Back in 2011 we ran a similar exercise. In that one we had a hypothetical retirement couple (both over 65) who derives their income from a roughly equal combination of social security, (non-government) pension, and investment income. At that time we arbitrarily computed income taxes for 2 income levels: $60,000 and $100,000. We then applied all the standard, personal, and over 65 exemptions we could find. These income levels are obviously
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Published on September 23, 2015
Comments 40
Category: Financial and taxes in retirement
September 29, 2015 -- Earlier this month we ran an article about starting your own business in retirement. This will continue the series, but this time we will concentrate on other ways to make extra money once you retire. With so many baby boomers concerned about their retirement finances (only 46% of members in our recent survey say that their expected retirement income will allow them to continue their pre-retirement lifestyles), we expect it is a topic many of you will be interested in.
There are generally 2 ways to put the extra money in your pocket that affords a worry-free retirement. You can either work for someone else, or you can be your own boss. Each of them has their particular advantages and disadvantages. Let's look at both.
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Published on September 28, 2015
Comments 8
