Category: Retirement 101 Course
February 20, 2019 --- By now you have hopefully taken our online "Retirement Preparation Quiz" and seen your score. If you haven't, you can take it here. Please realize that the original passing score (70%) was chosen subjectively - your opinion of the state of your retirement preparation is undoubtedly better than ours. We hope that by presenting the questions and reasons for the correct answers you can increase your understanding of retirement preparation. Note that for most of the questions we have provided a link to an article on that topic so you can explore it in greater detail.
Notes about the results
Almost 1100 people had taken the quiz as of Feb. 26. The average score for everyone taking the test was about 69%. That prompted us to lower the "passing" grade to 60% (from 70%), since many of the factual questions were difficult. In addition, for some of the questions that had more than 2 choices (e.g.; yes, no, somewhat) more than one answer might be considered acceptable. We have posted the percentage (%) of people who got each question right next the correct answers.
The questions that were most often missed were #3 and #8. Number 3 asked which of three investments had the best guarantee of income. Only 39% selected the "correct" answer, annuity, probably because people didn't realize the key word was "income", and assumed we meant "return". Number 8, age of breakeven for delaying SS until age 70, was answered correctly by only 34%. We can see why, because not all experts agree on the consensus answer of 81-82. All of the questions we asked about progress on preparation and/or discussion with spouse/family members had strong results, usually 80% or better. That is good news, indicating that there is a lot of planning and discussing going on. Somewhat distressing were the responses to questions 9 and 10 on wills and health care directives. Almost one third of quiz takers do not have one or the other of those, so it is time for them to get busy on those important tasks. Only about half (53%) have spent time thinking about "late" retirement. The questions with the highest % of correct answers were those that had to do with planning on what type of community or home they want to live in - 90% or more said they had.
Question 01 What is the average life expectancy of a woman and a man aged 65 years?
90 and 86
87 (woman) and 84 (man) - Correct (64%)
80 and 77
Comment: If you manage to live to the age of 65 you still have a long way to go - on average! This is a good thing to know when you consider when to take Social Security and budget your retirement - outliving your money is not pleasant. (Note: We added the age of a woman to this question following a Member suggestion).
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Published on February 19, 2019
Comments 4
Category: Retirement 101 Course
Note: The 4th module in our Retirement 101 Online Retirement Preparation Course is a 20 Question Quiz February 20, 2019 — One of the wisest pieces of advice we have ever heard is to “know what you don’t know”. The adage applies perfectly to the world of retirement, where good planning can lead to a…
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Published on February 19, 2019
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Category: Travel
February 17, 2019 — A potential solution to one of the biggest problems facing older retirees is on the road in The Villages, the world’s largest retirement community. Voyage, an automated taxi service, is testing driverless cars within parts of that community’s road system. If successful, the project will help older residents enjoy the freedom and mobility that comes with a car - even if they are not behind the wheel of that vehicle.
To begin with a certain number of “pioneers’ are able to use these taxis at no charge. The pioneers can call up a driverless car to go shopping, doctor’s appointments, recreation, visit friends - whatever they can reach within the neighborhoods involved in the test. The cars have a backup “driver” and a top speed of 25 m.p.h.
Giving up driving
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Published on February 17, 2019
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
February 11, 2019 -- Our "Dueling States" comparison articles remain all-time favorites at Topretirements.com (see complete list at end of article). Yet none is more popular than the one on "Dueling Carolinas". At last count there were 631 Member comments going back several years, and right up to several made yesterday. In fact, although the main article laid out the facts about each state when it comes to real estate prices, taxes, climate, geography, and where to retire, the best information about what it is like to retire in either of the Carolinas is contained within all of those comments. This article will reprint two recent comments which were exceptionally interesting. We'll also give you a tool on how to use these Comments to do customized Carolina research on topics that interest you. We look forward to even more comments too!
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Published on February 10, 2019
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Category: Financial and taxes in retirement
February 10, 2019 -- If you have been reading this Blog for awhile you know that fixing Social Security is one of our pet issues. In 2034, if nothing is done, the system will start to fail the millions of Americans who are counting on Social Security for their retirement. Yet prior to last week, no politician we know of had done anything to get the reform process going.
"The Social Security 2100 Act" was introduced into the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate in late January. Representative John B. Larson, a Democrat from Connecticut, is the sponsor, and he has 200 lawmakers supporting it. As written, the bill has several interesting features, most of which we approve. It would be the most significant reform of Social Security since 1983.
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Published on February 9, 2019
Comments 51
Category: Active adult communities
Note: This is the third module in our Retirement Planning 101 online training course. Here is a link to the entire retirement planning series.
Updated Oct. 2023 (originally Feb. 2019) -- If you are visiting this website the chances are you are thinking about living in some kind of retirement community. Even if you think you might end up staying where you live now, or just moving to a more age-appropriate home somewhere else, it is a worthwhile exercise to kick the tires in the retirement housing market. There are all kinds of communities suitable for retirement, so this Module, the 3rd in our Retirement Planning 101 Series, will help you understand the differences so that you can focus your search on the types that interest you.
Most communities serving the retirement market have some type of designation indicating they are for retirement age people. Sometimes the designation is senior living or retirement community, both of which we think are unfortunate labels, since they make us feel old. Many communities you might consider for retirement living do not have an age restriction, even though most of the people who live there might be at least 50 years of age.
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Published on February 5, 2019
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Category: Health and Wellness Issues
February 4, 2018 -- Millions of Americans are getting on their bicycles in retirement. Bicycling gets you outside, provides cheap transportation, and is great exercise. Your editor loves it and bikes almost every day. Unfortunately there is a dark side to biking; it can be dangerous. This article will talk about how can you can be safer while riding your bike, and what you can do to encourage your town or city to make biking safer for everyone. Most of these tips also apply to walkers as well.
Where it's safe, and not so much
Lists published on the towns and cities which have the most bike accidents abound, but they differ. The first and second most dangerous biking cities as reported by Your Local Security, a blog for home security company ADT, wouldn't shock anyone - New York City and Los Angeles. But the remaining 23 "worst" places would surprise you - almost all of them are in states like Iowa, North Dakota, and Oklahoma, places not known as biking centers. The safest cities were in states like California and Oregon (Davis, CA, was the safest city). BillBoneBikeLaw.com reports a very different most dangerous cities list, and most of those are in Florida. Orlando/Kissimmee, Tampa/St.Pete, and Jacksonville head up that list. One big reason why these lists are so different - they don't seem to take into account the number of miles biked. Places like New York have tens of thousands of bikes on the road every day, so of course there are going to be a lot of accidents.
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Published on February 3, 2019
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Category: Financial and taxes in retirement
January 29, 2019 -- Perhaps you have heard of the FIRE movement, which stands for Financial Independence, Retire Early. The idea is to retire in one's late 30s or early 40s by a combination of aggressively cutting down on spending and amassing retirement savings. There are hundreds of thousands of millenials, many of them in the hi-tech sector, who are enthralled with this idea. In many ways the movement is an outgrowth of the old "What is your number" question - as in how much money do you have to have in the bank before you think you can tell your boss to take this and sh*ve it! But for all of its devotees, there are many financial experts who warn that FIRE is not either feasible or safe. Here is what that smoke is all about.
One expert believes that is just not possible to accumulate a large enough pile of savings to be able to safely pull off an early retirement. Suze Orman, the popular financial guru, thinks you need $5 million to be able to pull off retirement. She thinks FIRE could be "the biggest (financial) mistake" of a lifetime. Mitch Tutman dismisses her figure as too high, saying you can do it with $1 million. Either way, it is the rare person who can scrimp and save enough to get to any one of those levels by the age of 40.
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Published on January 28, 2019
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Category: Financial and taxes in retirement
Note: This is Module 2 in our Online Retirement Planning 101 Series. See end of article for full list.
January 26, 2019 -- The overwhelming #1 suggestion for our Retirement 101 series was "How to Retire on Less than $1 million" (smaller numbers were suggested to). Certainly most retirees find themselves in this predicament. Living on Social Security plus maybe some small savings is not a recipe for a happy retirement - unless you take drastic steps!
Over the years in many articles we have outlined some of the tactics you can apply to make the best of this situation. But even if you fortunate to be well fixed financially in retirement, you still might be able to profit from a few of these ideas.
Exercise #1: Figure Out Your budget (this applies to everyone!).
Until you have a good idea of what your retirement expenses will be and how they match up to your income, you can't really start planning. While not difficult to do, it is a critical step to head off what could be a disaster - running out of money way before you are ready to check out. This budget worksheet in csv format contains most of the items you need to consider when developing a budget - just input them into a spreadsheet, by hand or on a computer.
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Published on January 25, 2019
Comments 13
Category: Retirement 101 Course
January 23, 2019 -- We had so many wonderful suggestions (48 comments in all!) on the future direction of our Retirement 101 Course (Module 1) - thank you! They were so helpful that we felt it important to summarize them here. This is a list of all the current "Retirement 101 Training Modules".
We had proposed 17 different potential modules for the course. The idea was that people could take as many as they felt they needed for their retirement planning preparation. The comments contained solid endorsement and/or additional ideas on six of our seventeen. But even better, you suggested seven topics we hadn't thought of, and all of them were interesting. Another way to look at these suggestions is that they are a great reflection of people's concerns about retirement - the topics that keep people up at night!
The new topics that got the most interest were "retiring without a lot of money", "being single in retirement", "loneliness and social relationships in retirement", and "the family bind/sandwich/family relationships". Interesting that so many have to do with the social aspect of retirement, a topic that gets overlooked in retirement planning. We have selected some of the representative suggestions below (and as you will see, they were great!). Of course, we welcome more ideas for the series too!
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Published on January 22, 2019
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