Tax Credit and Stimulus Payments for Boomers and Retirees in 2009

Yes, the 2009 Stimulus Bill contains a little something for boomers and retirees:  The retiree tax credit and the Making Work Pay credit.  The former credit will depend on your Social Security status.  The latter credit will depend on your income. Read more

A Simple Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care

All baby boomers need to have what I call health care crisis documents and “end of life” documents in place, to protect themselves and their families.  These documents include a will, a health care advance directive, and a durable power of attorney for health care.  I want to talk first about the health care power of attorney. Read more

Comparing Retirement Cost of Living in Different Locations

When baby boomers retire, many will consider relocating to lower their cost of living.  I think this strategy will take on more importance because of damage caused to retirement nest eggs in 2008-2009. Read more

Inflation and Retirement Investing

As baby boomers in the home stretch towards retirement, we have two major concerns about our retirement investing.  The first is recovering from the severe damage our retirement nest eggs suffered from the recession and market downturn that began in 2008.  The second concern is preparing for the threat of inflation that is likely to descend on our economy because of massive government budget deficits. Read more

Consumption Smoothing – Spend ’til the End

I have read (and continue to read) many books on retirement planning. Most of them have been on the money and financial aspects of retirement. Lately, I have taken more interest in the mental and emotional parts of retirement. I am reading a book now that addresses those specific issues. I will be reviewing that book here soon.

So far, my favorite book on financial planning for retirement is Spend ’til the End by Laurence Kotlikoff and Scott Burns. This book focuses on the application of consumption smoothing to a lifetime of spending, saving, and investing, all leading to retirement. Read more

Cutting Expenses to Preserve a Boomer Lifestyle

The markets continue to fall and nothing the President says or does is helping. The investing news for baby boomers cannot get much worse.  I don’t even want to calculate the market returns and time that will be needed to bring our retirement nest egg back to where it was a year ago.
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Finding Active Adult Communities

Baby boomers and developers are trying to keep up with explosive growth in the demand for active adult communities.  It is hard to do.  A Google search turns up thousands of hits, most of which are ads promoting one community or another. Read more

Retirement Research, Workshops and Seminars for Baby Boomers

The more I read about retirement the more I learn how complex the non-financial issues are.  There is a lot 
more to the transition than just stopping work, having fun, and minding your money.  Because of this, a number of universities have established programs specifically to research the retirement process.  Most of these programs publish the results of their research.  Some go beyond that by offering workshops and seminars to help baby boomers mentally and emotionally prepare for all facets of retirement.  I want to mention several of these academic programs that I have looked at for helpful information. 
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How to Pay-Off a Mortgage

This is a chronological summary of the practical steps we recently followed to pay-off the mortgage on our vacation home.  Hopefully you will have the opportunuty to reach this milestone in your financial plan.  If so, perhaps what we did will help you through the process when the time comes.
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Determining the Best Age to Start Social Security

Many baby boomers are in the home stretch toward retirement and thinking about what will be the best age for them to claim Social Security retirement benefits.  I have already written about this issue from several different angles but I thought it would make sense to pull all of that together and summarize the factors that I will considering when the time comes. Read more

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