Category: Retirement Planning
August 14, 2025 -- Retirement can be such an exciting time. Maybe you have picked out a beautiful new place to live, and are set to live the good life there. Unfortunately, it can also turn out to be and experience filled out with regrets and serious financial consequences. In this article we will go over some of the common things that retirees wish they knew before they moved somewhere.
What Retirees Wish They Knew
Even with the best planning it is still possible to make a mistake about where to retire. Fortunately, the more that goes into your preparation, the better the chances of a great and happy retirement. Here are 11 of the biggest regrets Topretirements Members have told us they have had over the years.
more...
Published on August 13, 2025
Comments 0
Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
August 12, 2025 — How often have we heard about a group of like-minded people who dream of retiring together – often! Getting over the logistics can be challenging, but for this group of women in Texas, it has sure been worth it. You will want to read the full…
more...
Published on August 11, 2025
Comments 2
Category: Health and Wellness Issues
August 6, 2025 -- Back in June I ordered a set of Philips hearing aids from Costco. In Part 1 of this series, "Hearing Aids Selection", I discussed the various types of hearing aids, why I selected the Philips brand over Jabra, and the decision to buy at Costco. This is Part 2, which will cover what my experience has been like wearing the Philips Hearlink 9040 hearing aids that I chose (a Receiver in Canal model). Hopefully this will be useful to others who are experiencing hearing loss. See bottom for more articles on baby boomer "Rite of Passage" articles including Social Security and Medicare.
So how am i doing with my new hearing aids?
Overall, it has been a good experience. Not as perfect as I would like, but they have definitely improved the quality of my life.
It has been a positive experience mainly because I don't have to lean forward and strain to listen to people when they are talking. The sound comes through and I am not missing out on the conversation, which i was starting to do before. The connection to my phone is great. I can not only adjust them from there, but I can use them to listen to music, podcasts, books, and phone calls, instead of wearing my airpods. While the fidelity of the sound from the hearing aids the sound isn't quite as good as from the Airpods, it is more convenient. The phone rings, you answer, and you hear through the hearing aids.
The installation meeting and the scheduled followup session provided by the Costco hearing aid specialist were helpful. I got a good orientation on how to wear, adjust, and clean them (important because ear wax can build up and impede performance). To me the luxury of having the personalized service and followup was worth any extra money I might have saved by buying them online.
more...
Published on August 5, 2025
Comments 1
Category: General Retirement Issues
August 5, 2025 — Topretirements will be returning to Mailchimp as the service that sends out our weekly “Best Places” newsletter. We apologize for the confusion that changing back from Substack might create. The switch back to our old newsletter style will take place with the August 7 issue. We…
more...
Published on August 5, 2025
Comments 0
Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
August 3, 2025 -- People give a lot of thought to where they are going to retire. Some of the factors they usually consider are climate (e.g.; warm winters), cost of living, tax burden, leisure activities, proximity to friends and family, crime rates, transportation, and quality and availability of health care. But as anyone following the news knows, there is a new factor that a thoughtful retiree should consider - losing your home (or your life!) from an environmental or climate disaster.
There is hardly enough room to list all of the environmental disasters we have seen in the U.S. in the past few years. There were 26 disasters in the U.S. last year that caused more than $1 billion in damages for a total of $113 biliion. Many occured in some of the most popular retirement spots in America, places where no one ever dreamed these things would happen. Those include floods in Asheville and the Texas Hill country, hurricanes in Florida, tornados in many parts of the U.S., wildfires in California, volcanoes in Hawaii, drought in the West. It seems like we are seeing one hundred year storms every few years, and the problems keep getting more severe.
So what can you do to find a safe retirement spot?
The New York Times put out a comprehensive section on this topic on July 13: "Where to Call Home". It doesn't appear to be available online, but you can find it in a library. It provides interesting guidance to help with what will be one of the most important financial decisions in your life, where to live when you retire. By doing your homework, you can do a lot to mitigate the risks of an environmental calamity ruining your finances, and causing untold disruptions to your life.
more...
Published on August 2, 2025
Comments 3
Category: Financial and taxes in retirement
July 29, 2025 -- Everybody's talking about Artificial Intelligence (AI). Governments are fretting about how to control it, employees worry it will take away their jobs, and a lot of other folks don't really care. The reality is that it is going to get even more important, and about to change our world profoundly. On the plus side, your imagination is the only limit to the many ways you can use it to help with your daily life.. Here's one very specific use - how to predict when you can retire, and how much it will take to do that comfortably.
Start by logging into a free AI service
We've been using ChatGBT (OpenAI), but there are plenty of others to choose from. Those include Google's Gemini for creative tasks and Anthropic's Claude. Microsoft's Copilot is another good one. You will probably have to create a login. They are usually free to start with, but if you use them a lot you will have to pay a relatively modest fee.
So When can I retire?
more...
Published on July 28, 2025
Comments 8
Category: Financial and taxes in retirement
July 23, 2025 -- Almost two thirds of Americans have this understandable fear- that they will live longer than their money lasts. According to the Morningstar Center for Retirement & Policy Studies, 45% of Americans who retire at 65 have an increased risk of running out of retirement savings before they die.
The basic problem is that most people haven't saved enough for a comfortable retirement. Just over half of baby boomers have saved less than $250,000. Another problem, even for retirees who do have significant retirement savings, is that most do not have a systematic approach to withdrawing those funds. One study by IRALogix found that only 22% of retirees have some kind of plan for taking down their savings. This article will try to provide some help on that score.
more...
Published on July 23, 2025
Comments 1
Category: Financial and taxes in retirement
July 23, 2025 – There is crazy and there is cruel, and both themes are running rampant at the U.S. Department of Labor these days. For cruelty, the Labor Department has just proposed eliminating some safety standards at factories and mines, as well as to limit the government’s ability to…
more...
Published on July 22, 2025
Comments 20
Category: Health and Wellness Issues
July 20, 2025 — Do you find yourself leaning forward to hear someone? Do you have to ask your grandchildren to repeat themselves? Do family members mention that the TV is pretty loud? Welcome to making it a "certain age" - you are probably experiencing normal age related hearing loss.
Sadly, it has to come to this for your Editor. I suspect many Topretirements Members are going through some of the same issues. In the hopes that others might learn something from my experiences, this article will share my recent (and continuing) adventures in hearing. Part 1 is about selection, Part 2 covers my experiences wearing them.
My decline in hearing has been coming a long time. About 10 years ago I first visited an Otolaryngologist, (ENT - Ear Nose and Throat M.D.). I kept taking hearing tests most years after that, always with the same result. The doctor showed me that I am missing the higher frequencies; where women, children, and many of the sounds of nature occur. But he didn’t think I was ready to be prescribed hearing aids.
more...
Published on July 19, 2025
Comments 2
Category: Bucket Lists
July 16, 2025 -- Maybe you've seen the movie "The Bucket List", starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. In the movie they each have less than a year to live. The plot unfolds from there, as this odd duo goes on a road trip trying to accomplish as much as possible in the days remaining before they "kick the bucket". Its premise is so applicable to those of us who are starting out in retirement. Although we are luckier than Nicholson and Morgan in that we (hope!) we have more than 1 year to accomplish our list, that also carries the danger that we have so much time left that we feel like we don't have to get started any time soon.
more...
Published on July 16, 2025
Comments 4
