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,

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.