Category: Adventurous retirement
June 3, 2018 --- A lot of Americans, including retired baby boomers, are thinking... small. As one example, our last visit to the barbershop was spent listening to the young guy in the next chair talk about the tiny home he is building. Everyone in the shop was fascinated with the unique touches and hi-tech stuff he was putting into it. In mid-May we reported on the boat that John is building for his retirement home, Next Chapter...Afloat. Yet another aspect of the think small movement, and the topic of this article, is the notion of discarding the notion of the RV, and replacing it with a customized luxury van - Vanlife, or Vanliving!
If the mobile lifestyle appeals to you, your thinking up to this point was probably limited to RVs (see our "Living the Mobile Lifestyle" series by Betty Fitterman). Now, enter the customized van, another option with many
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Published on June 2, 2018
Comments 12
Category: Retirement Real Estate
June 5, 2018 -- Almost half of baby boomers, unfortunately, have not saved enough money for retirement. That means they face a cut in the quality of their lifestyle. But for many fortunate folks who own a valuable home, particularly in a hot real estate market, a potential rescue is at hand. For example, retirees in coastal California in places like San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego have the option to sell their home, buy or rent a home better suited to a retirement lifestyle elsewhere, and pocket hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process. People with valuable homes who live in New York and its close-in suburbs, as well as other affluent markets, can catch a similar lifeboat. This article will explore where some of the refugees from America's hottest real estate markets are moving.
According to a recent report on the Trulia Blog, coastal California Metros are the perfect example of real estate good luck. In San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles, and San Diego homes on the market averaged $720,000 in March 2017, almost triple the $250,000 reported nationally. New York registered high median listing prices too, nearly $440,000. While these high real estate prices are not
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Published on June 5, 2018
Comments 14
Category: Financial and taxes in retirement
— “Beware those free dinners”—
Updated April 2023 - originally published May, 2018 —
One of several recent Member article suggestions was this one: “Is it better to hire a financial advisor or handle that financial planning yourself? And if you hire one, how should you go about it?” Thank you, that is a topic we know a lot of retired people struggle with. We should preface this article by saying that we are not financial experts. This piece summarizes recent interviews with four baby boomers who have wrestled with this topic themselves, plus some of our own experiences with financial advisors. At the end you will find links to some other great resources about how to/whether to hire a financial
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Published on June 8, 2018
Comments 17
Category: Financial and taxes in retirement
June 11, 2018 -- Some of the more reliable "10 Best Places to Retire" Lists come from Kiplingers. They recently came out with their "10 Cheapest States to Retire" version, and we think it is a pretty good effort. To come up with their ratings they looked at cost of living, taxes on retirees, average health care costs for retirees, and fiscal health of the state. As is often noted, sometimes you get what you pay for, although in the case of most of these states, you do tend to get more for your retirement dollars.
Although they didn't numerically rank their "cheapest 10", one ranking that is clear was cost of living compared to the rest of the U.S. Note that these rankings are on a statewide basis: different areas of different states can have dramatically different living costs. In big
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Published on June 11, 2018
Comments 7
Category: Health and Wellness Issues
By Roberta Isleib, P.H.D. (aka Lucy Burdette) June 16, 2018 — Putting my psychologist hat for a moment…we are hearing an awful lot about suicide these days, including the tragic deaths of celebrities Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain. For folks who haven’t felt seriously depressed or…
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Published on June 15, 2018
Comments 17
Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
June 20, 2018 -- The Nation's Capital is buzzing about a new article from Politico Magazine on The Villages and its politics. The article provides an extensive and interesting discussion of politics in this giant active adult community in Central Florida. Its title, "Generation Pickleball: Welcome to Florida’s Political Tomorrowland," foreshadows what its authors believe is coming for Florida's electorate.
For four of five recent years The Villages has been the fastest growing metro in the country. And, in Politico's political focussed article, it ..."is Trump country, a reliably Republican, vocally patriotic, almost entirely white enclave that gave the president nearly 70 percent of the vote." The area represents the future of the Republican party, and is considered to be the key to Gov. Rick Scott's bid to unseat Democratic Senator, Bill Nelson, in the 2018 election.
The article makes many points. Depending on your politics, you might agree with some
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Published on June 19, 2018
Comments 46
Category: Baby Boomer Retirement Issues
June 26, 2018 -- One of the pillars of Social Security funding is that each working generation pays the retirement benefits of those whose working years are over. A key assumption is that there will be plenty of working age people paying into the system to pay those benefits. Unfortunately, the ratio of working age adults to those on Social Security is going in the wrong direction. Back in 1980 there were 19 U.S. adults age 65 and over for every 100 Americans of working age. Thirty years later, that old-age dependency ratio had hardly changed; it was 21 retiree-aged Americans per 100 workers in 2010.
Declining birth rates since 1970 and the retirements of millions of baby boomer have changed that equilibrium - fast. The retirement segment to working population ratio was 25 to 100 last
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Published on June 26, 2018
Comments 39
Category: Retirement Planning
June 28, 2018 -- LakeSinclair (LS) posted this challenging comment on the Topretirements Forum last week: "I'm eight days away from retirement after being a college administrator for 40 years. Any thoughts on a particularly profound way to spend my first day?"
What a great question, thanks LS. It is worthy of a lot of thought. Part of the answer has to do with how far you have come in your pre-retirement planning. If you did a good job of that, then Day 1 can be even more celebratory. You know where you are going to retire, how you are going to stay busy, and you are confident you are on a path to a financially secure retirement. If your planning is not so far along, or maybe not even started yet, then perhaps
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Published on June 26, 2018
Comments 21
