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Try It NOWCategory: Financial and taxes in retirement
October 13, 2021 — Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) beneficiaries will receive a record 5.9 percent Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) for 2022. It is the largest COLA since 1982. The increase is based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI-W) from the third quarter of 2020 through the…
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Category: Financial and taxes in retirement
September 8, 2021 — The latest Trustees report for Social Security shows that the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 recession are affecting the future of this popular program, but no one is certain exactly how that will play out. One thing the report does lay out is that the Trust…
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Category: Family and Retirement
August 24, 2021 -- The assumption has always been that you would bring up your children and they would go on to raise their own families. Empty nesting and retirement would follow for you, bringing relaxation and less stress. But for the 2.3 million baby boomers who are raising an estimated 2.7 million children, the days of child care are not over yet. These "Grandcarents" are often in need of "Grandfamily" Housing, and the economic and other pressures are usually enormous. This article will discuss some sources of help if this is the situation for you or someone you know.
The ways that older adults become responsible for young children vary. Often it can be pinned on a drug epidemic like crack or opiods. Adult children get hooked, have children of their own, and the grandparents or uncles and aunts have to step in to avoid foster care and neglect. In other cases there might be psychological problems, the inability to hold a job, or incarceration. The pandemic has contributed to the problem too. Whatever the cause, assuming responsibility for young children when you are in your 60s and 70s is a forbidding challenge. We even know some people in their 80s who are raising their great-grandchildren.
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Category: Baby Boomer Retirement Issues
Note: This article has been updated to include vote totals as of August 10. However, you may still take the poll and the results will continue to change. August 4, 2021 — There seems to be more than a good natured rivalry going on with the baby boomer generation vs.
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Category: Active adult communities
July 21, 2021 - So you managed to get lucky. It looks like you might win the bidding to buy that condo, or a home in an active adult community. But before you submit the winning offer and break out the champagne, here are 4 things you need to do first. Your new community's financial picture deserves some extra looks, particularly in light of the collapse of the Champlain Towers South condo building in Surfside, FL. A community might look healthy, but until you have examined its financial reserves you really don't know.
This week we listened to an insightful interview on NPR with Robert Nordlund, founder and CEO of Association Reserves. An expert on reserves and the financial health of communities, he lists four things things you need to do before you invest your hard-earned money in a condo or home in a community. We have added some of our own commentary to his questions.
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Category: Financial and taxes in retirement
June 29, 2021 -- We baby boomers are constantly being warned that scammers are ready to take our last nickel, if we let down our guard for just one careless moment. An interesting pair of articles in the New York Times showed how that can happen to seniors, and surprisingly, that people in their 20s are twice as likely to lose big bucks to the internet's artful dodgers than older people. Online Trickery Traps Seniors reported on how the elderly (and that increasingly means us) fell prey to unethical political fundraising ploys from both parties in the recent elections. The second article, The Young Fall for Scams More Than Seniors, found that scams involving job offers, paper checks, and student loan forgiveness snagged a surprising percentage of people aged 20-29.
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
June 20, 2021 -- Virginia's recent Comment to our "25 Most Popular Active Communities in the Southeast" article really got things going. Many folks jumped in to help answer her question, which asked what people thought about retiring in Maryland. Since hers generated so many other Comments (and Maryland is not an active community nor is it in the Southeast) we thought we would pull everything together under a new post to keep everything in better focus.
Most of the Comments quickly got into taxes and cost of living, although just about everyone liked other aspects of the Free State. Regarding taxes, an estate lawyer once said something very wise to my mother and I. He said: "Don't let the tax tail wag the dog". In other words, if you want to do something for good reasons (like move to another state), do it. His mantra - enjoy your life; fear of taxes is not the way to live. Just as important as that thought though, you also have to act on the basis of the facts, not on what you think you know or heard from someone else.
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Category: Financial and taxes in retirement
May 24, 2021 — The Employee Benefits Research Institute (EBRI) has released the results from its annual retirement confidence survey – and they are pretty good! Back in 2014, 55% of all workers said they were “confident they would have enough money to retire confidently”. This year, 72% of all…
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Category: Estate Planning
April 12, 2021 -- Today we are fortunate to have an interview with Jim, a retired vice president and trust officer at a large Pennsylvania bank, who spent his entire career administering estates of all kinds and sizes. We think you will find his real life examples of what to do - and what not to do - in estate planning very useful.
The tips, advice, and experience that Jim brings to this important topic is critical, since inevitably, everyone needs an estate plan. Jim believes that only about 50-75% of people of retirement age have an estate plan of some kind. Most of those folks have wills, while a much smaller percentage have trusts. As he pointed out early on in our interview, even if you think you don't have an estate plan, you actually do. That is because in the event of no will or trust, the government has rules about how your assets will be divided after your death. The problem is that it probably won't be distributed the way you wanted it to be done.
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Category: Financial and taxes in retirement
April 5, 2021 - Naturally enough, most people concentrate their focus on their own Social Security retirement benefits. If they are careful, they compare the advantages of taking it early (as soon as age 62), waiting to Full Retirement Age (FRA, which is 67 for those born 1960 or later), or hanging in to get the maximum benefit at age 70. While it is great to know your own situation, most people overlook the importance of the benefits that might apply to their spouses. For some couples, particularly where one member earns much more than the other and Social Security will be the major source of income in old age, a bad decision can be disastrous down the road. This article will lay out the issues involved, so people can decide the best strategy for maximizing their Social Security spousal benefits.
There are two different scenarios to consider: spousal benefits while you are both alive, and survivor benefits when you depart this world. Let us take them one at a time.
Spousal benefits while you are both alive.
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