Blog
Weekly articles about how to live a secure, fulfilling retirement.
Does Medicare cover you when you travel?
Quick Note: Sorry things have been quiet around the site for a few weeks. I was on vacation with family and friends and prior to that I was scrambling to get things wrapped up at the office. I’m home and caught up, so it’s back to regularly scheduled programming....
Zen and the art of retirement
I just finished reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It’s a bestselling classic, but I must confess that I wasn’t a huge fan. It did have a few great nuggets that made me think, however, and today I’d like to share a short passage from the book that...
Three easy ways to take interesting online courses
When I was in college, I wanted to take a photography class as an elective. Unfortunately, I was required to take “Fundamentals of Drawing” as a prerequisite. I can’t draw to save my life, but I gave it a shot, assuming that the teacher would grade according to the...
Big changes to Medicare that could affect you
Congress just passed a law that made some changes to Medicare so I wanted to give you a quick summary of those changes and how they might affect your retirement plans. Positives Doctor Pay. The law repeals the physicians payment cut that had many doctors seriously...
What science teaches us about making retirement decisions
I think it’s fair to say that most of us believe we are rational beings and we make rational decisions. I just finished reading a book, however, that calls that premise into question. In Predictably Irrational, professor Dan Ariely uses cleverly designed experiments...
Walking the Camino de Santiago
Note: This post is part of a weekend series I’m doing throughout 2015 that is focused on fun things to do (or learn) during retirement (i.e. bucket list items). I hope you enjoy them and use them as inspiration for your own adventures. Congrats to Donna from our...
9 proven ways to live a long, healthy life
If you’re like me, you want to live a long, healthy life, filled with purpose and surrounded by those you love. What are some practical ways to make that dream a reality? Best-selling author Dan Buettner, along with a team at National Geographic, think they have the...
Retirement readiness flow chart
This week is National Retirement Planning Week, so I thought it would be good to give everyone a quick reminder of what it takes to get ready to retire. Sure, saving enough money is important, but retirement is more than just a math problem. There are plenty of...
5 behaviors that will ruin your retirement
In 8 Habits of Successful Retirees I talked about what actions, habits and behaviors make for a great retirement. But sometimes being successful at something is as much about avoiding the bad as it is about doing the good. With that in mind, here are 5 behaviors...
Here is how much you should have saved for retirement by now
How much should I have by my current age? A lot of material crosses my desk in a given week, but one thing that caught my eye recently was a retirement report from J.P. Morgan. One of the charts in the report was titled Retirement Savings Checkpoints. If you’ve ever...
How to make time lapse videos with your smart phone
Note: This post is part of a weekend series I’m doing throughout 2015 that is focused on fun things to do (or learn) during retirement (i.e. bucket list items). I hope you enjoy them and use them as inspiration for your own adventures. Congrats to Dennis from our...
Five things that matter more than money in retirement
We put a lot of emphasis on saving enough money for retirement, and rightly so. Money is important, but as I’ve said time and again, retirement is more than a math problem. One negative side effect of our obsession with our “number” is that we forget (or never...