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Managing Money in Retirement III: One Annuity You Should Buy
This is the third of a series of posts on retirement withdrawal strategies. If you haven’t read Managing Money in Retirement I and II, please read them first! In the last post, we explored the options for generating a lifetime income, something most retirees would find desirable and reassuring. Social security fits the bill, but may not be sufficient to cover essential expenses. Most people today don’t receive pensions, and the other options – bond ladders and annuities – have significant disadvantages (as well as some attractive features). But there is one source of lifetime income that stands out from the pack. An annuity that is a good deal Most…
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Managing Money in Retirement II: Income for a Lifetime
This is the second of a series of posts on retirement withdrawal strategies. If you haven’t read Managing Money in Retirement I, please read it first! Most of us would feel more comfortable having a reliable source of income in retirement — at least enough to cover our essential needs – rather than being completely at the mercy of uncertain investments in stocks, bonds, real estate or more exotic things. As a practical matter, though, how can we go about building the floor of a floor-and-upside strategy? First, let’s define what we’d like in the ideal world. The best source of income would be an inflation-indexed payment, lasting for…
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First Post!
Welcome to my blog! I retired in 2014, after working 30-plus years for natural resource agencies as a policy analyst and planner, including work on strategic planning, capital program budgeting, cost-benefit analysis, and watershed planning. In this blog, I would like to share some of what I’ve learned as I’ve made the shift into life after work. I will write several posts on the big question facing anyone contemplating retirement,“Can I afford it?” Having obsessed over this question myself for some time, and waded through a morass of conflicting and self-serving financial advice, I’ve come to the realization that understanding where you stand financially is surprisingly simple – if you…