Blog
Weekly articles about how to live a secure, fulfilling retirement.
The most important thing to know about your retirement budget
Here it is: Every year during retirement, everything you buy will cost more than it did the year before. Such is the nature of inflation. In 1990 a stamp was 25 cents. Today it has almost doubled to 44 cents. A gallon of gas was $1.16. Today you can expect to pay...
Three key retirement mistakes to avoid
Retiring in the place you want, with the people you want, doing the things you want, for as long as you want takes money, good genes, and a bit of luck, to be sure. But perhaps what is more important is the role that good decisions play. One of the earliest lessons...
Monthly rewind
Just in case you missed something, below is a quick summary of the articles I published at Intentional Retirement during September. There are plenty more on the way for October, so stay tuned. Essential financial tips for empty nesters 10 essential documents for...
Medicare: A short primer
Quick Summary: The basic information you need to know about Medicare. If you (like most) plan on using Medicare as your primary source of health care coverage during retirement, you should have a basic understanding of how it works. Unfortunately, according to a...
The power of deciding (+ the 100 day challenge)
Quick Summary: The things you want to do are only difficult until you really decide to do them. One of the things I write about here at Intentional Retirement is pursuing big goals. If you’re anything like me, sometimes staring a big goal in the face can be...
10 essential documents for retirement
Quick Summary: Key documents everyone needs to successfully navigate retirement. When planning for retirement, most people focus on saving, and rightly so. Having enough money to fund your retirement dreams is a key element to any plan. Often overlooked, however,...
Essential financial tips for empty nesters
If your kids are grown and moving on to the next stage of their lives, it’s time for you to begin thinking about the next stage of yours. For many, the empty nest years fall in that decade or so just before retirement. Because of that, it’s an ideal time to make...
How can I help you?
My primary goal with Intentional Retirement is to help you create a remarkable retirement doing the things you want with the people you love. That is the driving force behind the articles and resources that are currently on the site, as well as those that soon will...
Designing a retro retirement
It seems like everything old is new again. Starting with the redesigned Volkswagen Beetle in 1998, there has been a flood of retro styled products that are aimed at helping the baby-boomer generation recapture a piece of their youth. To wit, The Rolling Stones 2005...
What are you looking forward to?
Chris Guillebeau, one of my favorite bloggers and all around good guys wrote a post with that title yesterday. After reading it, I thought about the importance of having things on your horizon that you are looking forward to. That’s especially true for those of us...
Anxious? Keep your focus on what you can control.
It’s understandable if you’re feeling a bit anxious. Not only was the U.S. credit rating just downgraded for the first time in history, but over the last few years we’ve had a housing bubble, a credit bubble, runaway government spending, soaring gas prices, a global...
How the U.S. debt downgrade will affect your retirement (and what to do about it).
As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, S&P downgraded U.S. debt one notch last Friday from AAA to AA+. Aside from the short-term angst in the markets, how will the downgrade affect those of us planning and saving for retirement? Here are three likely consequences from...