Retirement Blog

Reader Lou Rose responded to yesterday’s post about retired Professor Robert Pritchard’s suggestion that Social Security eliminate penalties for working and collecting between age 62 and full retirement age. He wrote that he and his wife were working past full retirement age — 66 — in order to save at least a year’s worth of

How satisfied are you with your investment adviser? Is he or she meeting your retirement planning expectations? For the ninth year, J.D. Power and Associates has published its investor satisfaction survey. Annually, it asks more than 4,000 investors to rate their adviser on these factors. You might use these criteria to rate your own retirement

Here’s how to make a boomer happy. Let him or her celebrate a 62nd birthday, draw Social Security and still keep working at full pay. Unfortunately, the system doesn’t work that way. Today, people who are between 62 and full retirement age — 65 or 66, depending on their age — can claim Social Security, but if

A comment posted by reader John Crowley to yesterday’s blog about managing retirement income said he thought the retirement planning estimates of what it takes to live comfortably are too high, so I contacted him and in response to my email, Crowley wrote: “I feel that many projections of what it takes to live comfortably

Along with colleagues Assistant Managing Editor Barbara Whelehan and reporters Shelly Schwartz and Sheyna Steiner, I’ve been working on a Bankrate.com project that examines retirement income. If you thought saving for retirement was hard, wait until you try taking your money out of your savings and living on it month after month. That steady pension that

Certified Estate Planner Jean Dorrell’s 85-year-old mother left her pocketbook in the car, parked 50 feet from the hairdresser. During the few minutes while she had her mind on other things, a thief broke the car window and stole her pocketbook, taking all of her credit cards and identification, including her passport. Getting things reissued

There have been 101 reader comments so far on the retirement planning blog that I wrote last week about Congress considering ways to reduce the tax deductions associated with 40(k)s and other tax-advantaged retirement savings plans in order to reduce the deficit. Most of the people who posted have similar opinions: They want Congress to

When I started saving for retirement, the credit union clerk recorded it in my passbook in black ink. Today, I downloaded my first retirement savings application, or app, to my iPad (or iPhone). It’s from Vanguard and it makes managing retirement savings ridiculously convenient. The app allows Vanguard customers to: View  account balances, including those in

There have been many suggestions for repairing the Social Security shortfall. A report offered today by the National Academy of Social Insurance presented some new-to-me ideas: Raise FICA rate by one-twentieth of 1 percent per year over 20 years, up to 7.2 percent in 2035 — 63 percent fix. Dedicate to Social Security a revamped estate tax

Don’t let abuse disrupt your retirement or your retirement planning. Older Americans lose nearly $3 billion per year to elderly financial abuse, according to a MetLife study of the problem. Half of the crimes are perpetrated by strangers, while 34 percent of the abuse is delivered by friends and family. Exploitation by the business sector