I MAY NOT BE THE best source of retirement advice. After all, I’ve called myself semi-retired for a decade and yet, faced with a grim medical diagnosis, I continue to work far too hard. Moreover, even if I opt to fully retire—which is doubtful—cancer will likely ensure my retirement will be all too brief.
On the other hand, I do run a website devoted to retirement issues, and that means I spend a lot of time reading and thinking about the topic.

The year was 1988 and I was sitting across the table from my employer and his attorney, I was not a happy camper when they proposed to freeze the defined benefit (DB) pension. Instead, they would divert their contribution into a new 401k plan. I had been a pension trustee representing the union’s interest and had some awareness of some funding issues looming. Most employers are desperate to freeze those DB plans in order to escape the financial liability that can plague their bottom line.

Following is the text of a post that has appeared over and over on social media. 
“ The Retirement Scam
The average lifespan is 76 years.
Middle age isn’t 50 – it’s 38.
They’ve tricked us into working until we’re 67.
By the time we retire, we only have 9 years left in this world.
Why do we only get to enjoy life when we’re old,

I read Adam Grossman’s article Riding the Rails with great interest. He gave a well balanced perspective on retirement income strategies, but I came away thinking it’s complicated and scary no matter which approach is used – the point is these strategies are beyond the ability of many people and perhaps more so as we age.
There must be a better, that is, simpler way although I admit I don’t know what it is. Does anyone want to live in retirement knowing that to sustain their income at some point they may have to cut back on spending,

A RECENTLY RELEASED book titled How to Retire is a goldmine for those in or near retirement. For the book, Christine Benz—Morningstar’s director of personal finance and retirement planning—conducted interviews with 20 experts, covering every aspect of retirement.
The result is a valuable field guide for those tackling life after work. Below are seven insights I found particularly useful.
1. Social connections. When we think about retirement planning, most of us tend to think first about the numbers.

The actual formula for how benefits are determined is somewhat cloaked in mystery (at least to me).  Before I retired in mid 2001 at age 55, I tried to at least take a look at this topic.  The SS website at the time had a calculator which you could use to estimate future benefits.  I think it began with an estimate  based on you continuing  to work at your current annual income level until FRA.  So I already  had an approximation of what might get if I continued to work.

ONE SUMMER MORNING in 2023, my husband Warren and I had an ad hoc business meeting over bowls of cereal. He told me, “The pandemic really hurt my in-person speaker’s business. I’m not sure it’s ever going to come back.” Then I mentioned that my freelance-design income had also really slowed down, the result of a lack of marketing and enthusiasm on my part.
Neither of these was a newsflash. But that was the moment we realized this is what retirement looks like for a self-employed couple in their mid-60s.

Engineering Economics was a required course for my college major. Being introduced to concepts such as present worth, future value, continuous cash flow, compounding, rate of return, time values of sums, and how to factor in taxes and depreciation among other economic principles have been most useful in managing my own finances. When MS Excel was introduced a few years later, I found it useful to create economic models to evaluate various financial decisions. I also use Quicken to track our investment portfolio,

As I approach retirement, I have utilized several free retirement calculators to help answer the question, “Can I retire?”.  The exciting thing is they all seem to be confirming it’s okay for me to punch out when the time is right.  Of course, like any model, these are only as good as the accuracy of the input and assumptions.
Below are the calculators I have used.  Do you have any comments in general about these tools or have you used something you found useful that’s not on my list?

Quinn’s “big scary number” got me thinking about my approach taken on the path towards retirement. I would say being aware was my best tool.
Oh I did my share of spreadsheets and extrapolations, and while I had a goal of reaching a seven figure net worth, it had nothing to do with achieving a big scary number. Being aware of my spending and saving is what got me over the top. For me retirement planning meant knowing what would be coming in versus what would be going out.

I’VE DECIDED UPON MY retirement date: July 1, 2025. We just passed the one-year countdown point, so I thought I’d share some of my ideas and plans for my final year in the workforce.
This countdown idea, of course, isn’t original with me. Indeed, there are apps that you can put on your phone to count down the time until retirement. I was primarily inspired by a retirement blogger named Fritz Gilbert. He’s way more decisive than I am.

Not a day goes by that I don’t read something like “Americans say they will need $1.8 million to retire or $1.46 million or $X million” to retire “comfortably.”  “Experts” say it’s a multiple of retirement expenses –  25X I think – as if those expenses are steady and predictable over a retirement lifetime. 
Of course, many headlines talk about $1,000,000 as well. 
I see posts on social media- “I have $800,000 saved, can I retire?” The answers in reply are entertaining because based on the limited info given –

A Pew Research Center study (here) found that 23% of 50-year-olds in the United States have never had children.
As a 57-year-old who chose not to raise a child, I wonder how others feel about how this lifestyle choice has, or hasn’t, changed their retirement plans.
For myself, choosing to remain childless allowed me to save more of my salary than would have been possible if I had chosen to raise a family. I’ve seen online articles that suggest it costs nearly $250K to raise a child from infancy to adulthood.

Ken Cutler’s question about his retirement status made me think about how my retirement started. I’m curious about what path you all followed. As I approached retirement in 2020, I considered how much notice to give my employer. I had worked for the company for 20 years. I was not a manager, but I was an expert technical professional and had carved out a very specialized niche within the organization. Substantial organizational changes were implemented during the first three months of the calendar year and as a result I had three different managers over a very short span of time.

The 401k plan is often maligned by pension and retirement advocates. There’s is no guarantee with a 401k and it requires participants to take responsibility, contribute and to take the investment risk. That’s all true but there is more to the story.
I live on a pension as do some HD readers and writers. Would I trade my current fixed pension for a 401k plan, would you?  Not back in 1961 I wouldn’t have, but if I was entering the workforce today,