Fear of Outliving Your Retirement Money

I read a report of a recent baby boomers and retirement income study sponsored by the Allianz Life Insurance Company. The study findings fall into the “sad but true” category. Read more

Limiting Investment Losses

The markets seem to be rallying on some positive economic news from around the world. This is a tenuous rally and many experts believe stocks are still overvalued. The brokers won’t say this, of course. To them, it is always a good time to buy stocks. Read more

The Low Stress Vacation Home

The New York Times recently published an article that attempts to explore the harsh realities of owning a vacation home. I agree with many of the author’s views. I wanted to comment further because we are now experienced owners of a pre-retirement vacation home. If you have considered purchasing property to use for vacation or weekend living, perhaps you might learn something helpful from this post and/or from the article. Read more

Avoiding the Sunk Cost Fallacy

Some of the retirement planning mistakes baby boomers make involve a mistaken belief in variations of the “sunk cost fallacy.” Read more

Changing Our Retirement Asset Allocation

I am making a number of significant moves this week in our 401(k) asset allocation. It started yesterday with selling all of our mutual fund holdings after a temporary market rally, except for the Vanguard Inflation Protected Securities Fund (VIPSX).  I will briefly explain the reasons for what I am doing. Read more

Repay and Restart for a Bigger Social Security Check

If you are already receiving Social Security retirement benefits, you may be running out of time to boost your future benefits by using the repay and re-apply strategy. This unusual technique allows existing retirees to pay back the total Social Security benefits received (without interest) and then re-apply based on your current age. Read more

Downsizing and Mortgage Refinance Strategies

For the past year or so we have been openly discussing downsizing from our primary residence after our youngest son graduates from college next spring. We would take the proceeds from the sale and either buy something smaller in the area or, more likely, rent. Now we are rethinking that strategy. Read more

Attitude Adjustments for Retirement Success

I’m back from vacation – a wonderful week shared with family at the lake.  I am busy trying to catch up on things in my day job as a patent attorney.  I expect to get back on a regular blogging schedule tomorrow. Read more

A Vacation as a Mini-Retirement

I have been quiet on the blogs for over a week. Since last Friday we have been hosting 30 family members (four generations) at our lake house which we bought in 2003. This has been our 7th “family at the lake” event. Each has been great fun and a blessing. is year has been no exception so I deliberately dialed back the blogging and work activities to almost zero. I could easily have made it absolute zero as an experiment in full retirement mode. But I was concerned I would enjoy it too much!

For some other reading until I return, you might be interested in my most recent posts for the On Retirement blog at U.S. News and World Report: Three Steps for Easing into Retirement and Five Attitude Adjustments Needed for Retirement Success.

I will crank things back up next week with some interesting things to report.

Thanks for reading.