WHEN SOME FOLKS MAKE the all-important Social Security claiming decision, one worry outweighs all others. Their big fear: The program’s funding will “run out” in a few years and therefore they “can’t depend on Social Security being around,” so the smart strategy is to claim benefits at 62, the youngest possible age.
This is not a big worry of mine—largely because Social Security won’t “go broke.” What’s happening to the program’s funding is that,

I RETIRED FROM MY other job in 2022, so I could return to our family farm. Upon leaving, one of the first decisions I had to make was whether to take my pension as a lump sum or as monthly annuity payments.
The pension plan based the lump sum on length of service, salary and age, plus the interest rate as of the prior December. The lower the interest rate at the time of retirement,

DID YOU KNOW THAT more than 500 retired ballplayers aren’t receiving pensions for their time playing Major League Baseball? It’s true.
Today, the average salary per player is $3.7 million a year and even the last man on the bench receives a minimum salary of $700,000—and yet many old-timers are getting shafted by the sport they loved to play.
The story goes back more than four decades. During the 1980 Memorial Day weekend,

IN MY ONGOING EFFORT to reduce our accumulated stuff, I was trolling through our collection of old thumb drives to see what I should download, save or toss. Among them, I discovered the 258-page presentation from a two-day retirement course that my old employer sponsored in 2006.
I wondered how the advice had—17 years on—stood the test of time. As I reviewed it, I found some excellent suggestions and some that were lacking, though I hesitate to fault the presentation’s authors.

HOW MUCH DO I NEED to save for retirement? How much will I spend in retirement? Can I live comfortably in retirement? Can I even afford to retire?
I can answer all these questions, but most likely none of my answers will be exactly right—for you. Experts tackle these questions, too, but provide inconsistent answers. Google any of them and you’ll get a range of results. Without knowing your situation, such shotgun advice is pretty meaningless.

I MESSED UP MY retirement planning—but I have few regrets.
I don’t know if or when I’ll fully retire. Arguably, I’ve been at least semi-retired for the past nine years. That’s how long I’ve gone without a fulltime job. On the other hand, during those nine years, I’ve continued to earn enough to cover my living costs and I’ve worked longer hours than at any time in my life, thanks mostly to that insatiable mistress known as HumbleDollar.

I’M ANNOYED BY THE financial independence-retire early movement, otherwise known as FIRE. Most annoying are the FIRE bloggers who present their fantasy world of radically early retirement, but don’t like to be questioned, challenged or criticized. As if I’d ever do that.

FIRE folks typically have a few things in common. They were high-income earners before “retiring” and their households usually had two incomes. They’re willing—indeed eager—to embrace a frugal, nontraditional lifestyle, sometimes outside the U.S.

I’M A BIT EMBARRASSED to admit that, until I started toying with the idea of early retirement a few years ago, I was pretty ignorant about how Social Security worked. I didn’t even pay much attention to the FICA payroll taxes that were deducted from my paycheck.
As I looked into it some more, the prospect of receiving lifelong monthly checks from the government came as a pleasant surprise. I started researching how much I might get.

IN MARCH 1999, I began my job at the chemical plant where I still work today. During the weeklong orientation, I had my 26th birthday. It was the start of a job where I felt I couldn’t make any excuses. I needed to be an adult.

I would be making good money. After graduating high school in 1991, I’d averaged $18,000 to $23,000 a year in various jobs. In my first full year at the plant,

WHEN I WAS IN MY 20s, I was lucky to work for a company that offered a pension plan—and that put me on the road to retirement. Today, unfortunately, company pensions are rare. How can you ensure a comfortable retirement? Try shooting for these age-related milestones:
Age 25. Start saving at least 15% of your gross income. As I mentioned in an earlier article, a Fidelity Investments study found that if you save 15% of your gross income every year from age 25 through 67,

WE HAVE ALL BEEN affected by rising interest rates in 2022, from skyrocketing mortgage rates to plunging bond prices. A less-publicized casualty: Higher interest rates are having a big effect on those approaching retirement who are eligible for a pension.
How so? Many pension plans offer a choice between a lifetime stream of monthly income and a onetime lump sum payment. Rising rates could reduce the lump sum payment that many employees would receive next year by 25% or 30%.

A VANGUARD FINANCIAL planner once told me his clients’ biggest problem was that they didn’t want to withdraw money from their accounts during retirement. They lived beneath their means because they just couldn’t overcome their desire to continue seeing their assets grow.
If this describes you, too, you might be pleased to learn that required minimum distributions (RMDs) would be delayed a year or more if legislation, which currently sits before Congress, can slip through the crowded legislative calendar and pass before year-end.

WHEN I STARTED investing, I never thought much about risk, partly because I didn’t recognize that there were any.
The investor questionnaires always placed me in the aggressive category. Even though I never ventured much beyond mutual funds, all were pure stock funds, except for a small position in a balanced fund that I briefly owned. I didn’t know much, but I had learned that stocks most likely meant growth over the long haul,

ON THE CORNER OF MY desk, there are two binders. One contains my financial plan and the other my longevity lifestyle plan. One is no good without the other. How can I know if I’ve saved enough money if I don’t have a clear idea of what I want to do in retirement and how much that lifestyle will cost me?
The financial services industry’s focus has been on financial planning, with the objective of helping people accumulate as much money as possible.

WHAT WILL RETIREMENT cost? One solution to this riddle is to save as much as we can and hope it’ll cover our expected expenses. Finding the right answer—the exact amount of savings required—can involve hours of calculation, and even then there’s a fair amount of uncertainty.

At my financial planning firm, we help clients with this calculation. Our starting point: We believe the foundation of most retirement plans should be Social Security. Many Americans choose to take Social Security earlier than their full retirement age (FRA).