Articles
Propelled by sweeping demographic, economic, and lifestyle changes, retirement in America is experiencing a transformational shift. Starting with the "baby boomer" cohort (those born between 1946 and 1964), more workers plan to delay retirement past the traditional age of 65. Financial factors, including the disappearance of old fashion pensions that pay retirees an income for life and those expanding lifespans that can mean funding a retirement lasting three-decades or longer, have been the two main drivers of this trend.
Tips for preparing a new career or volunteer path for retirement.
Americans’ idea of “retirement” is changing, and many people today are looking to spend their latter years of life doing meaningful and engaging activities—whether that involves income-generating work, volunteering, or both.
In fact, an AARP survey found that 37 percent of working Americans ages 50 to 64 plan to keep working after retiring from their current job. Of those, 44 percent plan to change fields.
Tips for estimating your expenses after you stop working
Planning for retirement means making a lot of educated assumptions—where you will live, how much income you will generate (based partly on how your investments will perform) and how long you will live. One of the most important assumptions, though, is how much you will spend in retirement—as that determines how much income you’ll need each month or each year.
When Should You Take Social Security?
Here are the key questions to ask yourself to determine the right age to start claiming benefits.
You can claim Social Security retirement benefits as early as age 62, which also happens to be the most common age people start claiming them, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. But while it might be tempting to begin that early, you should think twice.
So now that you’re closing in on hanging it up, do you have an idea of how you’ll pay yourself once you no longer have someone paying you? Retirement planning boils down to this: making sure you have enough income to meet your retirement goals once you’ve stopped working for income. That is, you need to create a stream of income from your pool of assets. But how?