I was at a wonderful MegaCorp reunion a few nights ago and a few colleagues were celebrating their first year of retirement, or were planning to at the end of the year. A couple friends said that despite a lot of planning, they weren’t entirely confident that their financials were going to hold up to the next few decades of retirement life. Despite having financial … Continue reading Are You Likely To Run Out Of Money?
There’s probably not a lot new in this chart for most readers, but I thought it’d be a good reminder on a Friday morning … The author of the infographic (Ooma) did a nice job thinking about the key expenditures for seniors. There is more detail on the data sources & state ranking in their website. While it’s relatively easy to compare the cost of … Continue reading Retiree Cost By State
I’m having a milestone birthday this month – 60 years old. Turning 60 – after enjoying a full decade of early retirement – feels like a bigger milestone than other birthdays. After all, 60 is the age that many people retire, including my Father and Father-In-Law. It feels like the “early” part of our retirement is now over, but I still have a lot of … Continue reading Cyber Advice at Sixty
I’m on a flight from FL to MN right now and ran across this interesting survey from Empower, an investment company. I thought it did a good job showing how people are thinking about their financial lives & retirement. Link: Empower Study Overall, I’m generally pleased when I see how people are thinking about retirement, even if their actual behavior falls quite short. Like nutrition, … Continue reading Empowerment Retirement Survey …
The website, Ooma, recently published this interesting infographic comparing the states for the cost of living for retirees. They used 9 different dimensions for their ranking It’s a looooong infographic, so I broke it into key components so you can see the comparisons more easily. How does your state compare? I wasn’t surprised to see that our primary home state of Minnesota ranked in … Continue reading Retirement Cost of Living
Northwestern Mutual does a nice annual study on the ‘state of retirement’ in the USA. It’s a pretty exhaustive analysis that looks at all aspects of life and our involvement and satisfaction with each dimension. Link: Northwestern Mutual 2025 ‘Planning & Progress’ Study I was surprised by a few of the numbers from this year’s study and thought I’d share them. First, Americans are pretty … Continue reading Retirement Confidence
A few readers / friends sent me this cheeky t-shirt image, celebrating the stock market’s quick bounce-back from the Trump tariffs. Folks thought I was too negative about Trump’s move to correct long-standing “trade imbalances” – even though my official investor position was to “stay the course”. Related: Stay The Course Still, I thought it was important to acknowledge that the S&P 500 has quickly … Continue reading Trump Tariff Bounceback
I recently saw a few threads on Reddit where people were asked to answer the question “What are you most looking forward to in FIRE?” (financially independence & retired early). There were dozens of comments. I’ve been early retired over 9 years now, but I still love reading what people are enjoying / looking forward to, so I thought I’d share some of the best … Continue reading Things To Look Forward To In FIRE
It’s hard to sit still watching the tremendous waste & inefficiency being exposed in Washington DC over the last two years. The proceedings are a maddening comedy & disheartening tragedy at the same time. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported that a bipartisan Senate Committee was given evidence that as much as $1 trillion on a year are paid out fraudulently by the federal, state, … Continue reading Federal Comedy & Tragedy
Just a quick post today to highlight what could be the biggest change for the finances of retired people in a generation … eliminating Federal income taxes on Social Security. After seemingly not mentioning it since the election, Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told reporters yesterday that it is a key part of the budget negotiations that GOP leaders in the House, Senate, and White House … Continue reading No Tax on Social Security?
