Category: Financial and taxes in retirement
December 3, 2018 -- One of the intriguing lines that came up during the interviews for our "Should You Hire a Financial Advisor, Or Do It Yourself" article of a few months ago was this one: "Beware those free dinners". Lewis, the author of that quote, was referring to those invites you get in the mail for a free dinner at some nice restaurant; in exchange all you have to do is listen to some financial expert tell you how you can make a ton of money. Recently Ron Lieber, a columnist from the New York Times, took up that invitation, using one that came in for his 80 year aunt. The pitch was: "Tired of the stock market roller coaster ride? Want to protect your principal and lock in interest earnings?” The answer was to be found during a free
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Published on December 2, 2018
Comments 8
Category: Retirement Planning
December 5, 2018 -- This is Part 2 of our report on our recent Snowbird Survey. Part 1, "Florida is Favorite Snowbird Destination", contained the detailed results on the survey's first 9 questions. This installment is mostly made up of verbatim comments detailing where people snowbird to, and how they get there. Because these are actual comments from real people on this issue, we think you will find it a great source of ideas and comparisons to your own thoughts and experiences.
This article has three sections: Section 1 will start will overall observations, Section 2 is a sampling of 351 overall comments made to Question 10, "Anything More to Say", and Section 3 has a link to all 166 comments made to Question 8, "How Hard Was It to Find a Place to Snowbird".
Section 1: Observations
Driving vs. Flying. More people drive to their snowbird destination than fly; the ratio is about 3 to 1 in favor of driving. Top reasons for driving include: having a car at the destination, more room for stuff, taking pets, and visiting/exploring on the way are . Avoiding a multi-day, long drive is a top reason for flying. Many people who fly either keep a car at the destination, or have the car driven down.
East vs. West snowbirds. As is usually the case with Topretirements surveys, the majority of our audience is east coast based, mostly from the Northeast or Midwest. Although there were some folks who cross the Mississippi to either
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Published on December 4, 2018
Comments 16
Category: Financial and taxes in retirement
December 11, 2018 -- December 31 is the deadline for taking a Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) from your 401(k) or IRA if you are older than 70 and 1/2 (but if you turned 70 and 1/2 this year you have until April 1). Fines for not doing so are steep - 50% of the required distribution not taken. Because it might take several days for your financial firm to handle the distribution, it is definitely time to make sure you do this now!
Tax savings available
For people with substantial income and retirement saving balances, the taxes on an RMD can be significant - because it is treated as ordinary income. If you already have pension, investment income, and Social Security income, the RMD could tip you into a higher bracket. But there is an easy way not to pay taxes on up to $100,000 of your annual RMD.
You can take a Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD) by directly transferring funds from your IRA custodian to a qualified
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Published on December 10, 2018
Comments 1
Category: Work and Volunteering
December 12, 2018 -- This is Part 1 of a 2 Part Series. Part 2, "Older Workers Face Bleak Employment Prospects", describes the problem along with some strategies to overcome them. Back when the concept of retirement became institutionalized, our live expectancies were nothing like what they are now. When Social Security came into being in 1935 the retirement age was set at 65, but the odds were that if you made it that far you wouldn't be collecting long. During the Great Depression of the 1930's life expectancy for men was 59 and 63 for women: for people born in 2018 the expectancies are 83 and 86.
Although not everyone over 65 is healthy, vigorous, and mentally sharp, millions of us are. Which leads many experts to propose that in the face of a tightening employment market, employers should consider putting the whole idea of retirement on hold. This excellent article in Nautilus, "Retiring Retirement: A Growing Portion of the Elderly Look Anything But", explains the growing phenomenon of people who are not acting their age, and the reasons why they should be more gainfully employed.
The authors give some wonderful examples. One of their fathers-in-law, a 97 year old retired Air Force Colonel, is posed in
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Published on December 11, 2018
Comments 10
Category: Retirement Planning
December 19, 2018 -- Retirement is not always perfect, even for the people who are the most prepared for it. Our Member surveys indicate that most of the people who visit this website are very satisfied with their retirement, but there is almost always room for improvement. So when saw a recent survey from Global Atlantic that listed the top three retirement regrets, we were curious. Particularly, we wanted to compare the regrets in that survey with the results from our own surveys, asking about retirement satisfaction. After you read our comparison we hope you will all provide us comments about your retirement regrets and concerns (as well as what is great about it)!
The survey from Global Atlantic was concerned mostly with financial regrets. Our surveys were broader than that, exploring all types of concerns and worries, not just financial. Note that there is a semantic differences between regrets and concerns, although both have negative connotations. Regrets seem to be about the past, and concerns/worries are more present and future.
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Published on December 18, 2018
Comments 25
Category: Work and Volunteering
December 24, 2018 -- (this is a continuation of our "Time to Retire Retirement" Series.) Part 1 of this series starts with the idea that since people are living active lives much longer than what used to be retirement age, the idea of retirement might need to be reconsidered. In this edition we want to focus on the difficulties that older workers have if they decide to take up on that idea - postponing or maybe never retiring. An article from the Wall St. Journal, "Booming Employment Market Can't Fill the Retirement Shortfall", has some very sobering information on older people who would like to remain in the workplace.
The number of older Americans are out of work or stuck in low-quality jobs is large, almost 8 million. Over 5 million of those do not have health insurance. Adding to retirement savings or improving their earning record for Social Security in a meaningful way is difficult for them. Even for those who do manage getting another job, their earnings after a period of unemployment will likely suffer. Whereas workers under
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Published on December 24, 2018
Comments 19
Category: Retirement 101 Course
Updated February 25, 2021 (Originally January, 2019) — We’ve heard it said that new parents shouldn’t have their new babies released to them until they have passed a child rearing class. Something similar might be said for retirees - retirement is far too important a project to undertake without some preparation and planning. To that end we have created a multipart online training class on retirement preparation - and this is the first Module. As we imagine it, people can take the course years before they actually pull the retirement trigger. It can also be used as refresher training for those who are already enjoying their retirements.
At this point the course has 10 modules (see list at bottom), but we are not stopping there. Our members have suggested the themes for several of the modules (see Comments section below), and we will continue to add more in the years to come.
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Published on December 31, 2018
Comments 50
