Friday, July 26, 2013

Retirement and good living

I came across an interesting site for Boomers called Retirement and Good Living and I thought I would recommend it to all of you. The following is taken from their about page. I found the site, interesting with some great links. I think you might as well. The link to the site is here

Retirement can and should be a rewarding time of life. We created this site to provide information for anyone of any age contemplating retirement including boomers, the silent generation and all who have already retired. Retirement is the time to enjoy life.

Use the menu bar above Retirement and Good Living Menu bar to navigate through hundreds of pages of great topics and tools on retirement locations, finance/investments, health/exercise, travel, hobbies, part-time jobs, volunteering and much more.

Or click on the following quick links to jump directly to the topic of interest.

 
All this plus humor. Because without humor retirement can be very dull

4 comments:

  1. A Financial Success Story --
    The whole idea of retirement is planning for it an being disciplined with your plan. We on many occasions wanted to take money from our retirement savings BUT WE DID NOT. We stuck to the plan and it paid off in millions of dollars.

    Raised one son traveled the world when he was growing up and now he is grown and saving for his familiy the same way we did. My Husband & I worked for the GTE/ Verizon Telephone Company for 35 years each. We both started at age 20. Each year we would get a Merit Raise and for 30 years we saved half the pay raise.

    An Example
    If my take home pay check every two weeks was $100 and then I received a raise and my take home check was $120 we would put $10 in automatic withdrawal to saving each pay day. For 30 years we saved this money and never touched it. The best part of saving this way was we never missed it because we never had it. My definition of ("Living Within Your Means") is two pay check. Once you have the increased amount on a paycheck you will spend it or it is harder to save. My husband & I were very disciplined and never touched this money and when we retired at age 55 we had over a Million Dollars in this Account. We also saved an additional 16% of our wages to the Company Savings & Investment Program for our last 25 years. The Company would match half of what you save up to 6% in Company Stocks. That was a 3% pay raise each year. Having only worked for the Phone Company and being Millionaires is really great. We have been retired 10 years last November. Retirement is the best. My Husband & I preach to all people we meet that this is an easy way to save.
    Take Care & SAVE SAVE SAVE,

    In saving for retirement. You have to understand, you cannot do either because you hardly saved a dime. You had to have a nice car to impress others and you leased it. You bought the latest electronics all your life. You went out with the boys(girls) for lunch 5 days a week- you could be bothered to brown bag it. You bought a house you can hardly afford. You took the family out to eat most weekends and took expensive vacations because you "deserved it." Saving for retirement always seemed like something you would get to soon but never did.

    Compound Interest
    Most retirement funds earn compound interest. Although people generally understand that interest accumulates on these funds, some don’t understand the difference between simple interest, which is interest on the principal balance only versus compound interest, which is interest on the principal and interest on the principal that accumulates. Sound a bit confusing? Think of it this way: mathematically, time, as a variable, is multiplied by your rate with simple interest. With compound interest, you increase your rate by time exponentially. So, using simple interest, an account with a starting balance of $100,000 and a 5 percent rate will earn $100,000 in interest in 20 years ($100,000 x .05 x 20.)
    Let’s say instead of using simple interest, we use compound interest. That same $100,000 would grow to $265,329 in 20 years {$100,000 x [(1+.05)^20]}. Compound interest is a major reason why starting retirement savings while you’re young is so important. It gives your money more time to grow. The compound annual growth rate for the U.S. Stock market from 1/1/1871 to 12/31/2013 is 9.07%.

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  2. Well the beginning chapters are of an education no doubt and few children and discipline toward money like only the poor develop but hey some inherited money and attitudes toward it may have got the nest egg going. Well I got my education, married at 40 bought my first house at 30 moved to another location for a job and a "better life" with much of the habits you describe then ...I opted for plan B.. My husband did not work for 5 of the last 10 years before applying for disability.so he was very disabled and never qualified for SS/disability due to this hard line rule of SS.Blind, open heart surgery, heart attack on the table and a cardiac invalid so I asked for a divorce so we could get Medicaid for him and he refused to do that on principle. Our huge savings dwindled away he died and I used his life ins to pay off what was left of the mortgage. You were fortunate to have your health and no curve balls in this ol life.

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  3. You are absolutely correct life can throw us a curve without warning and all our plans go out the window. I am lucky but my wife did have an aneurysm while we were travelling and i am currently dealing with that curve ball. Thank you for sharing your story is a reminder to all of us that life sometimes not fair but always interesting

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