Category: Retirement Planning
March 9, 2021 -- It is a perennial question that affects just about everyone - when is the best time to retire? Sometimes one has no choice in the matter, such as airline pilots or military personnel who reach a maximum age or length of service. Others are laid off from a job in one's late 50's or 60's, before they wanted to stop working. Fortunately many of us get to choose when we retire. But answering that question is never easy.
Our friend Robert Powell just wrote a fabulous article on "What Is the Right Age to Retire". He outlines the major questions that need to be answered, which we will touch on here and add a few of our own.
Are you ready to FIRE?
The FIRE movement (Financial Independence Retire Early) has many adherents. They are mainly people who want to quit working as soon as they can, and they take amazing steps to save enough money to do that. It has its pitfalls and its triumphs, but it is clearly not for everyone. Certainly amassing enough money to be able to retire is a comfortable place to be. Whether you believe in FIRE or not, if you won't have enough money to live on comfortably, you are not at the right age to retire.
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Published on March 8, 2021
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Category: Health and Wellness Issues
March 6, 2021 — Thanks to the 300 people who took our Covid Vaccine Survey. Everyone in this community is in your debt for the few moments you donated to let us know about your vaccination trials and successes. Here are the results of the survey, with several surprises mixed…
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Published on March 7, 2021
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Category: Retirement 101 Course
March 3, 2021 — The problem with retirement is that there really isn’t a school for it. One day you are working, and the next day you could have twenty or even thirty years ahead of you with no plan as to how and where you are going to fill…
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Published on March 3, 2021
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Category: Health and Wellness Issues
February 25, 2021 – By now most of the Topretirements audience has probably had a chance to get at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine. Please take our quick survey of how that experience went for you. There are just a few questions on how you found out where…
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Published on February 25, 2021
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Category: Active adult communities
February 23, 2021 -- Want to know the active adult and 55+ communities Topretirements visitors are interested in learning about? We sure do, so we went through our user logs for the last 12 months, using them to identify the retirement communities that received the most online visits on this site. You will find the top 20 below - with many surprises mixed in with some sure things. Best of all, it is an interesting list with communities of all types from all over the country. That makes us happy, because it just not the same names all over again. Instead, there are many new communities for people to consider. Two of the winners are advertisers on this site, the rest are not.
Top 20 Active Communities for 2021
The Villages - Central Florida. Just about everybody has about this giant community. It spans 3 counties, has of over 120,000 residents, virtually every kind of amenity, and hundreds of clubs. 2000
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Published on February 22, 2021
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Category: Baby Boomer Retirement Issues
February 22, 2021 -- Seventy five years ago last summer GIs from America and around the world starting returning home after fighting WWII. It didn't take them long to resume normal life, where they quickly produced a wave of newborns the likes of which had never been seen before - the baby boom. Fast forward to 2021, where we are beginning to celebrate the seventy-fifth birthdays of that first crop of baby boomers. Happy birthday everybody.
We don't know what it was like in your elementary school classrooms, but in ours the impact of the baby boom was immediate and obvious. Our older sisters, created on shore leave, arrived in 1944 and 1945. Their classrooms had half the number of pupils of our 1946 born brother, and every other class after that. Our classrooms were jammed with kids.
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Published on February 21, 2021
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
February 16, 2021 -- Last week on this Blog we posed the question, "How Much Is Enough for Retirement". So when we came across this new study on the cheapest and most expensive places to retire from NetCredit, it seemed like the perfect follow-up.
As most retirees in the US or UK are figuring out, retiring in their own country means they are going to need over half a million dollars in the bank to do it comfortably. If that sounds unreasonable, then retiring abroad might be the next best option. NetCredit's new study crunched the numbers to find out what it would cost to retire comfortably in (almost) every country around the world.
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Published on February 15, 2021
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
February 15, 2021 — By far the two most popular states for retirement are Arizona and Florida. Choosing between them can be hard, there are so many factors to consider. Both have warm winters in most of the state, but beyond that the field is open. Many people in the…
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Published on February 14, 2021
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Category: Financial and taxes in retirement
Updated June 2024 -- If there was ever a perplexing question it is this one - how much is enough for a comfortable retirement? The short answer is - more than you probably think! Many experts think most people need at least $1.5 million. According to the many experts, the average 404(k) balance of Americans is between $70,000 and $120,000 - a huge shortfall. See "Needs and Actual Retirement Savings Are Far Apart". The long answer starts with the fact that most people haven't thought enough about their own situation to come up with a reasonable answer. Once you understand how your expenses match up with your income, then you can start to know how much you need for retirement.
People tend to underestimate several key components of the expense side - like how long they will live and what their medical costs will be, and forget about unexpected expenses like replacement roofs, worn out cars and AC systems, and assistance to family members. They also tend to have a vague idea about their income sources, and overestimate how long their savings will last. Much also depends on your lifestyle - you can live within almost any budget if you match expenses to your income, although it might be hard and require lifestyle changes.
So the first thing to do when trying to calculate how much you need for retirement is get a realistic handle on your budget - matching income to expenses. Income is fairly easy for most people to calculate, while expenses are harder. The expense side of the equation can vary widely, depending on your lifestyle, which fortunately you can modify. Here is a monthly budget sheet that is very helpful in seeing what your future income and expenses will be.
Step #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. It is a critical step to head off what could be a disaster - running out of money way before you or your significant other check out of this world.
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Published on February 8, 2021
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Category: Health and Wellness Issues
(Updated July, 2023) - February 5, 2021 -- Is The Villages the STD Capital of the US - fact or myth? Any time the subject of The Villages (TV) in Central Florida comes up in conversation, the chances are that you will hear someone chime in with the tidbit that the popular active community is the STD capital of the US. In many circles this bit of false news is taken as the gospel. Everyone chuckles and they move on.
Is The Villages the STD Capital of the US?
The rampant STD rumor - Is The Villages the STD capital of the US first erupted in 2006 after a gynecologist who had moved to the area stated that she’d treated more cases of herpes and human papillomavirus in The Villages than when she practiced in Miami. She later modified her account, but the damage was done. The New York Post picked up the salacious report as did other media outlets across the country. Andrew Blechman's Leisureville, which depicted Mr. Midnight's late night adventures as a senior citizen Lothario, also helped to perpetuate the image of TV as Gomorrah in Central Florida.
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Published on February 4, 2021
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