Retirement Planning Topics

Retirement Income and Portfolio Expenses

For years you have been accumulating funds for your retirement. When your retirement date finally arrives, it is time to withdraw assets to pay for the retirement phase of your life. Developing a Safe Withdrawal Rate (SWR) is the single most important decision you will make regarding your retirement assets. Before getting into SWRs I […]

Basic Rules of Retirement

In this holiday shortened week I thought I would write a short post on the basic rules of retirement. If you follow these simple rules, it will be difficult for you not to succeed in achieving your retirement goals.

Addressing Inflation in Retirement

My last post discussed my biggest retirement fear; the fear that the US will experience persistent high inflation at a rate much greater than the return on my retirement assets. In this post I will discuss several ways that retirees can try to mitigate this risk.

My Biggest Retirement Fear

My biggest retirement fear is related to my last post about the coming changes to government retirement benefits. If you have not read my previous post, you can click on this link and read it now. However my biggest retirement fear is not caused by the expectation that these old age retirement benefits will be […]

The Coming Changes in Government Retirement Benefits

In recent months, as the country debated the federal government recent debt ceiling issue, I have had discussions with many people about the federal government retirement programs and the problems they present to the country. The big question is, if and when these programs will change in the future. These programs affect how we plan […]

Other Retirement Income

Many baby boomers nearing retirement today did not have a disciplined savings plan starting at an early age. This is why many financial advisors are recommending that people work part time in retirement to supplement their other retirement income. If you find part time work that you enjoy, then continuing to work a few hours […]

The 4 Percent Rule

Before discussing real estate investments or retirement portfolio income withdrawal strategies, I need to go over the 4% rule. I have briefly mentioned the 4% rule in previous posts, but in future posts this rule will be central to many topics. It is very important to understand this simple concept.

Post #24 – Summary of Retirement Planning Simplified

Thus far this blog has concentrated on general retirement planning ideas and concepts. To date the blog posts have been numbered because they are presented in a logical order for someone who does not have much experience in the area of retirement planning. In this post I will highlight the main retirement planning ideas and […]

Post #22 – Constructing a Simple Portfolio

In my last post, Post #21, I provided some thoughts for choosing your investment vehicle for holding your retirement assets. The main point of that post was, when choosing investment funds, it is best for the average retail investor to pick funds with the lowest fees (i.e., lowest management expense ratio). After choosing your family […]

Post #19 – The 2 Biggest Retirement Planning Mistakes Made by People over 50

There are many investment/retirement mistakes people over 50 make in planning for their retirement. In my experience there are 2 retirement planning mistakes and 2 investment planning mistakes that are the most common. In this post I will discuss the retirement planning mistakes.