The 34th Annual Retirement Confidence Survey (RCS) from the Employee Benefit Research Institute provides interesting insight into many of the topics discussed in the Forum. About 1200 of both workers and retirees were surveyed. 
I’m always a bit suspicious of surveys, but there aren’t other ways to obtain an insight from individuals that I know of. 
It’s a mixed bag. 
Planning can be improved in several areas, Social Security is not well understood, while it remains a significant source of income.

“Hi, I’m Chris”. That’s how it all began in early 2002. My friend Dave and I were hanging out of a hole in the wall of my duplex, installing a new window. Chris was the good looking neighbor girl. She thought Dave and I were a couple, he was actually my best bud, living with me and providing his carpenter skills in lieu of rent during some hard times.
By the end of the year I and Chris were a couple,

WHEN I WAS a teenager in the 1960s, the popular expression was, “Do your own thing.” We baby boomers were supposed to reject our parents’ ways of thinking and do what we thought better. These better things included growing our hair long, wearing blue jeans, having beards, not wearing bras and making love, not war.
I liked this “do your own thing” way of thinking. But I also discovered that doing your own thing,

Physical strength is essential to making our way in this world. While we may not have to rally our muscles to subdue wild beasts or unruly neighbors, we do need them to accomplish our daily objectives. At a minimum, we have to muster the energy to get from bed to bathroom to breakfast table. Even if we make money with our minds, rather than our bodies, chances are we’ll need the stamina to sit up and manipulate a keyboard.

A sobering read (apologies, this article is behind a paywall hence I am not sure if I can reproduce the article here or attach the pdf)
 
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/18/health/retirement-community-bankruptcy.html

It’s a new year and another RMD. My practice has been to wait until October to begin withdrawals with QCDs and then the balance before year end. My thinking is to let the funds keep growing, but of course the opposite is possible. 
Is there a better way? Should RMDs be taken early in the year, periodically throughout the year? 
Any thoughts? 

A QUOTE OFTEN attributed to Mark Twain goes as follows: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
This certainly applies to personal finance, and it’s why it can be helpful to take a step back sometimes to revisit widely held notions—including these six.
1. Social Security. You may have heard of Social Security’s “earnings test,” which can reduce the size of monthly checks for those who continue working after claiming benefits.

I remember when I managed 401k plans and conducted educational programs for employees trying to discuss risk tolerance. I concluded over the years few people actually understood their own risk tolerance, including me. It was easy to claim being willing to take risk when things were going well, but that confidence quickly disappeared if their account dropped three days in a row. 
To help, we built, with “expert” help, three funds – a mix of the mutual funds and Guaranteed Investment Certificate or Contract (GIC) offered by the plan.

I MOVED FROM LONDON to New York City in 1986, when I was age 23. That’s when my financial education truly began.
I’d previously studied economics for three years and spent a year writing about the international financial markets for Euromoney magazine. Still, I knew almost nothing about investing, insurance, homeownership and other topics crucial to managing a household’s finances.
I’ve learned a ton since, and the focus of that education keeps changing,

It’s Friday, I drove 5-1/2.hours yesterday to get to my happy place – yeah, Cape Cod. We are here for a few days. 
It’s very quiet, silent is a good word and it snowed an inch or so last night. 
But as I sit here, I’m thinking what do we have to do today? Yesterday before leaving NJ there was a doctors appointment. Today there is nothing, I feel like there should be something to do,

This is not intended to be a political post. Indeed, I could easily have written these words four years ago, when Republicans were fretting over Joe Biden’s election.
Political partisans often freak out when their favored party loses at the ballot box, prompting them to take rash financial actions. But with Donald Trump set to return to the Oval Office on Monday, I’d advise sitting on your hands. The fact is, presidents are not omnipotent—and can face swift punishment if their actions unnerve the population.

TWELVE PERCENT. THIS is a pivotal number in my financial life.
What does it refer to? Is it the average annual return on my investments? I wish. Is it the percentage of my pre-tax income that I dedicate to retirement savings? No. That number, including pension and 403(b) contributions, is closer to 25%.
Instead, that 12% is the slice of my pre-tax income reserved for housing. When picking a place to live, I’m a cheapskate.

Youth is not making the scene the way it used to.  It has been said that baby boomers will redefine the concept and process of aging.  America is growing older. “ Gerontology, the science of aging, is a booming field because so many of us are outlasting the biblical span of “three score and ten”. So writes James Chappel, author of “Golden Years: How Americans Invented and Reinvented Old Age.”
Our population is aging. This not only brings challenges to the elderly,

MANY FINANCIAL planners say you shouldn’t look at your investment portfolio too often because it may prompt you to make poor decisions based on short-term stock market performance. I try to follow this advice, even though it would be easy for me to take a peek, because we have almost all our money with Vanguard Group.
Ever since we consolidated our investments, I’ve noticed a change in my wife’s attitude toward money: Rachel is more willing to spend.

I just read an interesting article by Christine Benz of Morningstar. Each year at this time she takes a look at major financial firms projections for future market returns.
Although I don’t pay any attention to year end individuals’ market prognostications this article did catch my eye. She found that these financial firms have reduced their return expectations for US stocks. Every firm in her survey is expecting higher returns from non-US stocks than domestic over the next 10 years,