Category: Retirement Planning
October 21, 2015 -- Maybe the better question is, "Do you have a retirement plan". According to Richard Russo in a recent MarketWatch Retirement Weekly article, having a plan greatly increases your chances of success. So if you don't have one, now is a mighty good time to start. This article will explain what sorts of things should be in your plan, and how you can use it to help you achieve a successful retirement.
Russo, a senior financial adviser with Clarity Financial in Houston and author for Random Thoughts of a Money Muse, cautions that you shouldn't get uptight about your plan if it isn't working out exactly as you had thought. He says they are "extraordinarily imperfect... 20% science and 80% forecast (or art)". He believes you should start your plan 5 to 10 years in advance of when you think you might retire. If you do, you can greatly
more...
Published on October 20, 2015
Comments 27
Category: Retirement Planning
June 12, 2015 -- Oh, the things we say we are going to do in retirement. And if only we did them! We were inspired by a recent MarketWatch story, "Five Lies We Tell Ourselves in Retirement", which focused on lies people tell themselves on financially related aspects of retirement. We liked the idea enough we decided to create our own list of lies, but with a different focus - (mostly) non-financial fibs. This is our list - we encourage you to add
more...
Published on June 12, 2015
Comments 16
Category: Retirement Planning
By Jan Cullinane and John Brady
Note: This is Part 2 of a 3 part series. See bottom of article for links to the other two.
April 16, 2015 -- In Part 1 we published detailed answers to the first two questions we asked our panel of six retirement experts - where they chose to live, and why. In this continuation of the series at Topretirements you can read how they responded to questions about aging and long term care, how well they followed their own advice, and their tips on finding a place to retire and a successful retirement. There is a lot of wisdom and food for thought in their responses; we hope you will enjoy them and
more...
Published on April 18, 2015
Comments 4
Category: Retirement Planning
By Jan Cullinane and John Brady
Note: This is Part 1 of a 3 part series. See bottom of article for links to the other two.
April 4, 2015 -- Most of us know by now that one size cannot fit all when it comes to choosing our best place to retire. Just look at the tons of books, magazine articles and websites that try to answer that very question. So at the suggestion of our frequent contributor, Jan Cullinane, we decided to take a different approach, and go right to the source by asking a half dozen retirement gurus, including the authors of this piece, Jan Cullinane and John Brady, where they chose to “retire.” The word “retire” is in quotes since most of these experts are still working (some more than others), although their work is free from the constraints of being tied
more...
Published on April 4, 2015
Comments 20
Category: Retirement Planning
April 2, 2015 --
By Jan Cullinane and John Brady
Retirement advice is not hard to come by – it seems like every website and newspaper will tell you how to do it. So we were intrigued when our frequent contributor, Jan Cullinane, suggested a different approach. Her idea was to ask a half dozen retirement gurus to describe their personal retirement plans and rate how well they followed their own advice. We think you will enjoy learning how they went about finding a great place to retire...where they decided to live... the areas where they think they planned well....and even where some felt they didn’t merit an A - in their own class! Note that due to the length of the various responses we have divided this into three articles. This is the Summary.
more...
Published on April 2, 2015
Comments 6
Category: Retirement Planning
Note: This survey is closed. To see the most interesting results, go to: “Topretirements Members Very Confident About Retirement” September 9, 2014 — Please share a couple of minutes to tell us about your confidence in maintaining your standard of living, importance of proximity to good medical care,…
more...
Published on September 9, 2014
Comments 1
Category: Checklists
August 19, 2014 -- Whether you have decided to stay where you live now or maybe move out of state, you need to make a wise choice about where you retire. Part of that decision hinges on you being realistic, and demanding, about the requirements you need to make all the years of your retirement fulfilling - not just the first 10 years or so.
As we baby boomers age we are definitely moving the average
more...
Published on August 19, 2014
Comments 14
Category: Retirement Planning
August 5, 2014 - Note, this is the 3rd article in our series on how to avoid wrecking your retirement. The first 2 articles can be found in "Further Reading" below.
Retirement is hard enough without making a self-inflicted, hard to recover from mistake. To help you avoid that trauma we have searched through comments to our previous retirement surveys and the general literature for the
more...
Published on August 4, 2014
Comments 69
Category: Retirement Planning
July 28, 2014 -- Rich got our attention when he contacted us to suggest a city review for Ocean Shores, Washington. For one, we had never heard of this town. But more intriguing to us, he happened to mention that he had a 7 page analysis of how it stacks up to the criteria he found on Topretirements.com. That sounded pretty thorough to us. One thing led to another, and subsequently we had the pleasure of interviewing Rich about that analysis.
A Search for the Perfect Retirement Town
Rich and his wife, Jan, had lived in Washington State for 26 years early in their careers (1969 - 1995). Then they moved to Texas, where Rich
more...
Published on July 29, 2014
Comments 27
Category: Retirement Planning
June 24, 2014 -- Thanks to the over 1800 members who took the time to contribute their valuable insights to last week's "Where You'll Live" poll. We appreciate you sharing! As promised, here is a detailed report on the findings. At the end of this article you will also find a complete report of the more than 450 individual responses to question 11, "Do you have anything else you would like to share about your retirement living preferences and the reasons behind them?."
Highlights
Your input provides confirmation of many opinions we hold about retirement preferences in general, along with some surprises. For example, it is not much of a stretch to bet that most of you are interested in retiring to a warm weather clime, with the Southeast and Southwest at the top of your preferences. We did not expect to see the level of interest there was in a suburban environment. And we were blown away with
more...
Published on June 24, 2014
Comments 52
