Retirement

I’ve written about the US National Debt here and here and here. I even wrote my representatives in congress here. I try and avoid politics, but the staggering amount of debt we have, coupled with no efforts whatsoever to address the debt make me concerned. In my first post a little over a year ago, […]

I’m 62 and retired. Paychecks stopped coming over 5 years ago. I took the leap and retired at 56, after doing quite a bit of analysis on expenses, growth projections, and likely market scenarios. It seemed like there was a high probability that I could retire comfortably and my job just wasn’t that much fun

I’ve written a bit about retirement planning. While most people focus on the big number – How Much Money Do I Need to Retire Comfortably? – That number can be very different depending on each of our individual circumstances. That big number will be very different for someone who is still paying a mortgage (or

There has been a lot of excitement about social security lately. Social Security is funded by us and our employer. Since this is “our money”, we expect that it will be paid out to us when we retire. While that makes sense, there has been a lot of talk about: Both of these are causing

This morning I was reviewing my year-to-date expenses. Yup, you’re jealous right – we retirees have all the fun. Don’t feel bad. I have a big BBQ lunch coming up later. Anyway, once again, I was surprised at our expenses. Everyone said they’d go down once we retired, but they’re up. What gives?? Taxes I

This morning, I was reading about tariffs and the national debt. I wanted to understand more about how tariffs could help the US pay off some of our debt. If other countries are paying us tariffs, presumably that is a huge amount of money that could be put toward our $37 trillion debt. I’ll spare

There is a ton of information online about when to take social security. While many conclude that it makes better fiscal sense to wait until full-retirement-age (67 for me) or 70, when we can get the largest benefit payment, I decided to take it as soon as possible. ssa.gov The Social Security Administration has lots

I seem to read a bit lately about angry old men (hey wait, that’s me) ranting about social security. “I’ve paid into social security my whole working life. That’s my money and you can’t take it away.” As a retiree, more sympathetic I could not be (het wait, that rhymes). ssa.gov If you haven’t already

If you are the average American, the answer is simple. Not enough. Why is this? Well, with many Americans living paycheck to paycheck, it’s hard to put money away. This is a common answer, but it’s not the whole story. Many wealthy families are also significantly behind in their retirement saving. So what gives? Are

Most of my buddies are in retirement, or are getting close. We spend a lot of time chatting about how to enjoy our retirement, and how we might have planned differently. I thought it would be worthwhile to gather some of that info here. Read on to learn about preparing for retirement. What Do I

If you’re anything like me, you want to spend as little time on taxes as possible. There’s nothing worse than seeing a huge chunk of our paycheck each week going to pay Federal, State, Local (maybe), Social Security, and sometimes other taxes. Yuck! But taxes serve a purpose. It’s nice to see the poor folks