10 Great Retirement Planning Blogs

There are quite a few excellent financial planning blogs out there – so many that I sometimes wonder why I’m adding my own site to what is already a crowded space in the blogosphere. Then I recall how much of what is out there is misleading, self-serving or just plain incomprehensible. My goal is to provide sound retirement financial planning ideas and advice, written in plain English, without any underlying agenda. I believe investing and financial planning are really quite straightforward if you can tune out the noise. I try to provide enough explanation and references that the curious reader doesn’t just have to take my word for what I’m saying, but can follow up and dig deeper where he or she is so inclined.

A great way to broaden your understanding of financial planning for retirement is to spend some time exploring some of the better blogs out there. This post lists some of my favorites. Spending some time browsing through these sites can give you a deeper understanding of retirement planning, including insight into what the experts all agree on and where they disagree. The authors of these blogs tell compelling stories, share enlightening analyses, alert you to important issues, impart enthusiasm, and share their experience and wisdom. (Note: I have no affiliation with and receive no compensation or advantage of any kind from any of the sites I recommend below. I just like them.)

Nerd’s Eye View — Michael Kitces

Michael Kitces is a widely respected writer and analyst on financial and retirement planning. (I’ve cited several of his blogs in earlier posts.) His financial planning expertise is vast, and his advice always sound and on target. I found his posts on Safe Withdrawal Rates (he thinks the 4% Rule still works) and on the popular “Bucket” approach to organizing your retirement finances (more mirage than real safety net, in his opinion) particularly insightful. A word of warning – he’s primarily writing for other financial planners, so some of his posts are pitched a little high for the typical lay reader.

Retirement Researcher — Wade Pfau

Wade Pfau, one of several writers on Retirement Researcher, has received wide recognition in the finance world, and has published some important articles in the Journal of Financial Planning and elsewhere. Mr. Pfau has updated the Safe Withdrawal Rate studies by Bengen and the Trinity Study, and writes on whether the 4% Rule is still sound today (he leans toward a more conservative 3.5%). I particularly liked a piece he wrote with Jeremy Cooper, in which he compared “the Yin and Yang” of different retirement income philosophies, i.e., safe withdrawal rates vs. the lifecycle finance/safety first approach. Unfortunately, the RR site does not seem to be set up to allow the reader to thumb through his posts easily.

Oblivious Investor — Mike Piper

Mike Piper says that the point of his blog is “to show that investing doesn’t have to be complicated.” In my opinion, he succeeds remarkably well. He has a solid grasp of the range of retirement planning topics, from safe withdrawal rates to investing strategies to annuities, social security and taxation. He has a knack for explaining these sometimes complex topics clearly, concisely, and without jargon. He is a proponent of the simple, index fund school of investing brought to the masses by the late Jack Bogle, who famously said:

“Don’t look for the needle in the haystack. Just buy the haystack!”

(See this post for more on the index fund approach to retirement investing.) If you tire of reading through Mike’s 900 or so posts, he has several books on retirement planning that are also short and sweet.

Asset Builder — Scott Burns

Scott Burns was a financial columnist for the Asset Builder blog and the Dallas Morning News, writing about all manner of financial topics for over thirty years. His advice, wit and wisdom were couched in fluid writing and engaging story-telling that educated you without effort on your part. Although he is now (unfortunately for us) retired, his posts are still well worth reading. He is probably best known for catching Peter Lynch giving bad retirement advice (see this post) and for inventing the “couch potato portfolio” back when passive index investing was still pretty much a fringe idea. His archives can be found here.

MoneyWatch — Steve Vernon

Steve Vernon is a well known financial planner and writer. He has decades of experience about pretty much every aspect of retirement planning, from social security claiming to working in retirement to health care. His MoneyWatch posts are free of jargon and easy to follow. I find his work on withdrawal strategies particularly interesting; he explains the value of annuities clearly and objectively – a refreshing contrast with much of the writing on annuities – and, in a study done for the Stanford Center on Longevity, concludes that combining delayed Social Security with IRS Required Minimum Distributions might be the best retirement withdrawal strategy for most people.

The Retirement Cafe — Dirk Cotton

Dirk Cotton, a retired executive, has earned recognition within the financial planning field for his Retirement Cafe blog. His posts, which often go into some depth, are thoughtful, analytical, and well written. He brings an independent mindset to the questions he explores, and isn’t afraid to take contrarian positions when he believes the conventional wisdom is off base. He throws in interesting stories and history, and provides useful references to his sources. I particularly recommend his Unraveling Retirement Strategies posts on different types of withdrawal strategies (e.g., constant percentage, constant dollar, floor-and upside, buckets), which I found enlightening and well worth reading.

Mr. Money Mustache – Peter Adeney

Peter Adeney, better known by his nom de blog, Mr. Money Mustache, may be the most widely followed of the many Financial Independence/Early Retirement (FIRE) bloggers. Indeed, he has attained almost cult status, with thousands of disciples known as Mustachians and annual conventions of the faithful. The FIRE movement is wildly popular on the Internet, with myriad bloggers charting their progress toward the big day or reporting back from their world travels or fulfilling post-work lives, encouraging others to stay the course. If you’re going to read a FIRE blog (and you should – this is where a lot of the energy is in retirement planning), I can recommend Mr. Money Mustache. He writes in an entertaining, iconoclastic style (despite being something of an institution himself at this point), and lays out clearly the basic FIRE message and math – save a lot more than most people and live on a lot less, and you can stop working for the man a whole lot earlier than you might think. Even if you don’t plan to retire young (or, like me, it’s too late to retire early!), it’s valuable for anyone to understand the trade-offs and have a plan to reach financial independence (a.k.a., retirement). And such enthusiasm – you can’t help but enjoy it!

Early Retirement Now — Big ERN

Early Retirement Now is one of my favorite FIRE sites. Karsten Jeske (Big ERN’s real name) has the background (a PhD in Economics, work for the Federal Reserve and investment firms) to dig deep into the financial analysis behind retirement planning. He has made it his mission to understand – and share – the ins and outs of investing, sequence of returns, portfolio allocation, withdrawal strategies and the like as they apply to early retirees – who may need to plan for 50 or 60 years of “retirement!” His analysis is outstanding – there are useful insights even for those of us not planning to retire in our 40s – and his cogent and entertaining writing makes his complex topics accessible to the average shmoe (although you couldn’t call it light reading) . Check out his series of posts on Safe Withdrawal Rates; the early retirement equivalent of the 4% Rule appears to be 3.5 (or maybe 3.25) percent — if you stay invested 80% in stocks! And don’t miss his hair-raising analysis of the prospects for those who retired in 2000 and are counting on the 4% Rule. (See this paper.)

TIPSWatch — David Enna

Financial journalist David Enna writes TIPSWatch, the best resource I’ve found on Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) and I-Bonds (inflation-indexed savings bonds). While this blog has a niche focus, I include it on this list because I think TIPS (and I-Bonds) are something every investor should consider including in the bond portion of their portfolios. With TIPS, you can lock yourself into a real rate of return (admittedly not very high at the moment!) and protect yourself against the potential effects of inflation on medium and long-term bonds. Enna’s easy-to-follow TIPSWatch posts educate you on the pros and cons of TIPS and I Bonds, and provide helpful alerts and analysis of upcoming Treasury auctions.

The Bogleheads Forum

The Bogleheads Forum is an online forum that has intelligent, often in-depth discussions on practically every financial topic under the sun. This site, created by followers of John Bogle, has a definite philosophy – low-cost index fund investing, as pioneered by John Bogle and Vanguard, the fund company he founded. Since this is an approach that has been demonstrated to beat 80% of active fund managers, and is eminently suited to small investors because of its low cost and simplicity, it’s a bias I can get behind. Boglehead regulars are collegial, and many are extremely smart and savvy about financial matters. I confess to a secret crush on the moderator, Ladygeek, and would love to meet the gracious dean of posters, Taylor Larimore, the thoughtful and insightful Nispirius, and many others. There’s so much on the site it can be intimidating; I recommend Googling whatever financial question is on your mind and appending “Bogleheads” to the query – you’re almost guaranteed to find a fascinating, instructive discussion.

There you have it – ten blogs, some written for everyman, some more sophisticated and in depth. They cover the range of retirement planning topics from a variety of perspectives, and are all very readable and well done. Pour yourself a cup of coffee and start exploring!