Category: Retirement

There are lots of mistakes we might make throughout our lifetimes that can cost us and our family some serious money. That’s why financial advisors and other experts are always talking about what you should do to make sure you are positioned to maximize your earnings and avoid the mistakes that will derail your retirement. The Retirement Confidence Survey by the Employee Benefit Research Institute in 2015 points out that only 22% of all American workers feel very confident that they are properly prepared for retirement. It’s important to understand how our financial planning strategies are helping or harming our ability to maximize our retirement savings.

Today, we’ll look at the 8 most common retirement planning mistakes we need to understand and attend to. Have you looked at all of these and put yourself on solid ground towards your goals and successful retirement? Continue reading

As a retiree myself, the recent news regarding Social Security benefits has me worried and troubled. Not only for me, but for the millions of people who are struggling to maintain an acceptable standard of living while relying on these benefits. I write about retirement planning here on this blog, and when things like omitting the cost of living adjustment occur, it’s an emphatic reminder that we all must plan appropriately for our golden years if we want to be able to enjoy them.

Beneficiaries will not get a cost of living adjustment (COLA) in January 2016, the Social Security Administration (SSA) announced this past Thursday. For seniors and others receiving benefits, this can make managing finances a more difficult experience. Continue reading

Retirement planning is a task that often confuses, frightens, and intimidates us. When we think of what will and might occur after our employment years end, we wonder how we will manage and what kind of lifestyle we will be able to afford and maintain. We wonder what our health will be like when we retire, and how that will affect what we can do. We fear that it’s already too late and we’ve missed the opportunity to invest our savings to give us enough post-retirement funding.

Facing how our lifestyles are bound to change, we wonder if we have prepared ourselves for it. The questions asked and options supplied in Choose Your Retirement: Find the Right Path to Your New Adventure will help you plan what kind of retirement you want as well as figure out how to afford those plans. Continue reading

So many personal finance bloggers that I read each week write about the things you need to do to help you prepare for your retirement. I have done it myself. Those blog posts are very helpful in letting you know what you will need as income, how to estimate your after-retirement expenses, and talk a lot about how you can begin preparing really early in your career in order to maximize your own situation. In the case of younger retirees, the emphasis is usually on financial independence and “early retirement”. For many of us, however, retirement will come along in our later years, the 50’s, 60’s or even 70’s. At 66, I’ve been fully retired for a couple of years.

Rarely, however, do you hear from retirees on the realties of retirement: what do they actually do when they retire? and what did they do right and wrong to prepare for it? Since I am retired, and I’m also a blogger, I thought I’d tell you what I know and have learned as a retiree. Continue reading