In honor of my late father’s birthday today, I’ve decided to post an article I wrote many months ago but never released to Jonathan for publication. 
MY FATHER’S FINANCES has some parallels to my own. Like me, he saved his end of year paystubs. Using an inflation calculator, I was able to compare his earnings to mine. He was an accountant who rose to the highest level of his company, while I was an engineer who topped off at senior staff level,

A recent post by Dan Smith took a crack at evaluating at the often heard statement that we would all be better off if the FICA taxes we paid into the Social Security (SS) trust fund were instead invested in individual accounts. The idea is that by investing our payroll taxes in something like an S&P 500 fund, we would be better off at retirement. This strategy has the benefit of long-term compounding, since many of many us will work upwards of 50 years. 

I was fed up with the people who claim we’d all be better off if an equivalent sum of money was deposited into private accounts instead of Social Security, so I set out to prove them wrong.
I deserve a slap on the back from my spreadsheet loving engineer friends. From my first year working in 1969 to retirement in 2022 I listed wages by year, SS payroll tax by year, and the growth after 54 years if invested in the S&P500,

WITH THE ADVANTAGE of advanced age and flawless hindsight, I now believe the three most important contributors to retirement prosperity are a robust savings rate, an aggressive allocation to stocks and funding tax-free accounts, both Roth and health savings accounts (HSAs).
What about other financial factors, such as the investments we pick, whether we buy income annuities, when we claim Social Security and what Medicare choices we make? These matter on the margin, but I don’t think they’re as crucial to a successful retirement. 

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.

It’s January 1, and my retirement countdown app says “5 months and 29 days”! Now that it’s 2025, it really seems close.
I have a bunch of financial tasks of my winter quarter sabbatical/pre-retirement list and have already taken care of the first two:

Increase (double) contributions to my tax-deferred accounts (403B/457). With over-50 catch-up contributions, in 2025, I can contribute $31,000 max to each account, or $62,000 total. Since I’ll only be working for six of the 12 months,

An article in today’s Wall Street Journal illustrates a problem I never considered.
Many retirees who paid off their mortgage as part of retirement planning are now finding that increases in property taxes and home property insurance are so significant those payments now exceed the former mortgage payment thus putting some retirees in a financial bind. 
It seems applying a standard inflation factor to future costs for those items may not be accurate. 

The Winter Solstice occurred today at 4:21 AM, Eastern time.  The Winter Solstice is defined as the point in the Earth’s orbit  when the sun is furthest south, and the Earth’s northern hemisphere is tilted furthest from the sun. It is the shortest day of the year; days will start getting longer.
When I was an aerospace engineer, designing thermal control systems for geosynchronous satellites, the Winter Solstice was one of 4 important dates in the year,

In an article published today titled Retiring from Farming is Complex and Not Always Planned the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College discusses the additional challenges that farmers face in their retirement planning.
https://crr.bc.edu/retiring-from-farming-is-complex-and-not-always-planned/
My wife and I are just back from a road trip Christmas visit with two of our adult children and their families that included driving across Indiana twice. After again seeing the vast farm lands and work I wanted to express my gratitude and appreciation to our farmers who keep us fed and whose efforts helps make my comfortable retirement possible.

I want to ditch my great 401(k).
When BrightScope rankings of 401(k) plans were available to individual investors, mine ranked very highly. By most measures in this Morningstar article on whether to keep your 401(k) in retirement, mine merits keeping. Besides these factors, I have a few of my own reasons that I like it.
First, I like its stable value fund, which is managed to keep a $1 per share price (not guaranteed) but with a higher return than any money market I’ve seen.

ThinkAdvisor has a list of the 12 cheapest states for retirees to live a comfortable retirement. The estimated income needed ranges from about $63,000 to $58,000 a year. 
Their report defines “comfortable “as individual’s spending on housing, groceries, transportation and health care in each of the 50 states to determine the average retirement income necessary for a comfortable retirement lifestyle.
There is no single definition of comfortable retirement. Alabama is one of the states on the list.

I recently read – again – that 401k plans are a scam. You can’t save enough, you can lose money, etc.
Consider these words of wisdom. “It is a scam. When I worked in corporate America I contributed the max amount each year. At the time it was $19k per year. It took 5+ years to hit $100k. When I stopped contributing it barely grew.”
We don’t know the years involved, but nevertheless it’s nonsense. Investing the $19,000 a year even in a GIC would get you over $100,000 in less than five years. 

How did you know it was time to retire? How will you know?
For many folks, this is purely a financial question. They hand in their notice when their portfolio hits a target size or when their likely retirement income surpasses what they think they need.
But what about you, HumbleDollar readers? Was the realization it’s time to retire about more than just money? For those still in the workforce, what will be the signal that it’s time to quit—and will that signal be solely financial or will other factors play a role?

I often read on HD and elsewhere about retirement and plans to retire in the early 60s and quite often in the 50s even a rare 40s. What happened? 
We live longer, we are able to sustain our health and stamina longer in most cases, many jobs have become less physically demanding than in the past and yet age 55 seems to be the new 65 for retirement – or has it?
One would think with the above changes and the generally poor nature of retirement financial planning,

Jamie Dimon says, “The American dream is disappearing—and half the public no longer believes in it”.

Soaring costs of housing, child care, education, and health care are making it harder than ever for the middle class to achieve their dream. Pew research study found that while 64% of upper-income Americans say the American dream still exists, 39% of lower-income Americans say the same – a gap of 25 percentage points. About two-thirds of adults ages 65 and older (68%) say the American dream is still achievable,