-
Retirement Planning Tool Tracks Your Progress
Tweet Share on Facebook June 30, 2010 CommentThere are scads of online tools that ask you key questions about your retirement goals and then provide you a dollar figure for how much money you need to be setting aside to reach those goals. And that's all they do. The rest is up to you. Mint.com, a 3-year-old personal finance site that was bought late last year by Intuit, has just launched a new series of planning tools called Mint Goals that can follow your spending, income, investment, and retirement plans in real time, and provide informed advice on how you should proceed. It is not alone in this space and future Best Life articles will explore other online tools. Also, I'm explaining the service, not endorsing it.
[See America's Best Affordable Places to Retire.] -
Big Makeovers at Retirement Communities
Tweet Share on Facebook June 28, 2010 CommentRetirement communities are expanding services, often to non-residents, as they seek to combat the lingering effects of a serious recession and devise ways to broaden their appeal to potential new residents. Broader fitness and health programs can be seen at many communities. Major changes have been made in dining facilities and meal plans, providing residents with more choices over what, when, and where they have their meals. And while a protective environment that emphasized insulation from its surroundings has long been a selling point of retirement complexes, the model of many facilities today is to seek more extensive integration with outside consumers and organizations.
[See America's Best Affordable Places to Retire.] -
10 Essentials for Successful Retirements
Tweet Share on Facebook June 25, 2010 Comment (1)Day after day brings new headlines of problems and pitfalls for retirees. We save too little and can't afford to stop working. We make poor investment decisions and don't know how to get the most out of our shrunken nest eggs. Social Security benefits may be cut. Medicare benefits also face trims. The national ship of state is going down the tubes in so many ways, and no one will be handing out life preservers to older citizens as the ship sinks.
[See America's Best Affordable Places to Retire.] -
Social Security Looks Good From Here at 75
Tweet Share on Facebook June 23, 2010 Comment (4)Social Security celebrates its 75th anniversary this year. The program today is fundamentally not so different than it was in 1935. But it has come to play a more important role in retirement security than its creators anticipated. Its linkage with Medicare, which turns a youthful 45 this year, has combined to help lower the poverty rate among seniors from about 30 percent to less than 10 percent. That's an enormous shift in the well being of older Americans. So, when you look at the shortcomings of society's safety net for seniors, please keep in mind how powerfully these programs have done their "big picture" jobs.
[See America's Best Affordable Places to Retire.] -
Experts Spotlight 8 Key Retirement Topics
Tweet Share on Facebook June 21, 2010 Comment (7)MyRetirementPaycheck is worth a visit for anyone grappling with retirement issues. It was developed by the National Endowment for Financial Education (NEFE) in partnership with many leading retirement experts. The site divides retirement issues into eight topics that can have a major impact on how much money is available for retirement -- debt, fraud, home and mortgage, insurance, pensions, retirement assets, Social Security, and work. It then explains the major issues in each category and adds some valuable insights about the linkages among the eight categories.
[See America's Best Affordable Places to Retire.] -
Traditional Life Insurance Regains Appeal
Tweet Share on Facebook June 18, 2010 Comment (3)Long derided for providing low returns, traditional whole life insurance has weathered the recent economic storm better than many other insurance products. And while its sales trail those of its more sophisticated cousin, universal life, the safety and certainty of whole life insurance have appealed to increasingly risk averse consumers.
[See America's Best Affordable Places to Retire.] -
Lifetime Income is an Elusive Goal
Tweet Share on Facebook June 17, 2010 CommentThe 2008 meltdown of many retirement investment accounts has triggered a long and extensive assessment of how to provide safer retirement investments that people can depend upon and understand. The need for better retirement products is widely supported by employers, investment companies, and federal bureaucrats and legislators. But as the fact-finding has continued, the process has exposed exactly how difficult it will be to identify the right products, the right regulations to govern their use, and the right ways to provide consumers with a massive dose of financial education that they need to make solid retirement investment decisions.
[See America's Best Affordable Places to Retire.] -
Financially, We're All Conservatives Now
Tweet Share on Facebook June 16, 2010 Comment (1)Even before recent market reversals, Americans believed their financial difficulties would last for a long time, according to a new study funded by Northwestern Mutual. The nation's sober attitude toward its financial future may reflect long-term shifts toward more conservative investment and retirement goals.
[See Annuity Buyers Seek Safety, Risk Guarantees.] -
Recovery Favors Warm Retirement Locales
Tweet Share on Facebook June 15, 2010 CommentThe South has fared better than other parts of the country in recovering from the recession, according to Brookings Institution's quarterly study of the country's 100 largest metropolitan economies. For seniors deciding where to spend their later years, higher-growth areas can translate into better public services and less pressure for higher taxes.
[See 15 Tasks to Become Retirement Ready.] -
How the iPad Can Be a Senior Saver
Tweet Share on Facebook June 14, 2010 Comment (15)
I wasn't the first kid on my block to have an iPad. I was the oldest kid. And it's not been easy. I've had to struggle with admiring onlookers who profess jealousy that I have such a neat toy. And at times, it has been hard to find more than five or six hours of enjoyable daily activities to do on my iPad. But I've persevered and while I've just scratched the surface, it is clear that the iPad can be an invaluable tool for older users. As the first mass-market tablet computer, it will be followed in short order by competing tablets from many providers, mostly in the PC (as opposed to Apple) world. This will lower prices and increase features.
[See 5 Ways to Join the Personal Technology Party.]
