Boomer and Retirement Weekly Reader – Entrepreneur Edition
August 30, 2009 by Mr. GoTo
Filed under Boomer Reading
Six weeks ago I was persuaded by experience and research to make some radical changes in our retirement planning philosophy. Four weeks ago I converted that changed philosophy into a new retirement investing plan. I developed spreadsheets and other tools to aid in developing and implementing our plan.
There were some interesting readings this week on the topics of retirement planning and retirement living.
According to this article from the Washington Post, the news on credit card usage by baby boomers and retirees is not good. It seems that the percentage of adults aged 55-to-64 who needed more than 40 percent of their income to pay down debt was 12.5 percent. This is higher than all other age groups. The average long term credit card debt for low and middle-income Americans 65 and older is $10,235, an increase of 26 percent from 2005. The 80 year-old mentioned in the story incurred her crushing debt to “help family.” There needs to be a law against bloodsucking family members preying on the older generation.
Get Rich Slowly reminds us how significant even a 1% difference can be when compounded over the life of a retirement investment plan. Keep this in mind when comparing expenses in a mutual fund.
The Personal Finance Advice blog ran a guest post with a comprehensive explanation of how the writer retired early. Good stuff to inspire us.
A blogger at Morningstar tells us how the financial services industry is wrong to push the myth that we will need to replace 80-90% of our pre-retirement income when we retire. I agree. So many of the retirement “rules of thumb” are actually rules of “dumb.
Thanks for being a reader of Go To Retirement. Enjoy your week.
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