Baby Boomer Retirement Guides

and more can be found on the website, RetirementRevised.com 

Published and edited by Mark Miller, author of the syndicated column Retire Smart,  the site focuses on the reinvention of traditional retirement–how the baby boom generation is revising its approach to careers, money and lifestyle after age 50. 

Guides on retirement planning, jobs, benefits and saving & investing are offered as well as links to retirement topics in the news.  Retirement calculators, book recommendations as well as job hunting tips for workers 50+ are included.

Happy Birthday, Retirement Planning Club! – March meeting report

We’re a little early, but for our March meeting last night, we had a party, sharing cake with our discussion.

First we watched a program from PBS’s Nightly Business Report, “Get Your Finances Ready for Retirement.”  The program dealt with the subjects of retirement lifestyle planning, how much to save for retirement, when to retire, and Social Security issues.  If you missed our meeting, copies of the program DVD are available in the library’s collection.  A transcript of the program, as well as video, podcasts and related materials, are on the NBR website (it was their “Memorial Day Special” last year), as well as information on other programs in their retirement series.  Like our Club, it is also funded by the FINRA Investor Education Foundation.

Following the DVD viewing, Liz moderated an open discussion, and the program generated a lot of questions about Social Security benefits.  Our speaker next month (April 15) will be Francine Kollias of the Social Security Administration’s Regional Office, and while her topic is Medicare and Social Security Disability, she should be able to clear up some of the other Social Security questions raised as well.

In the meantime, the Social Security Administration has a wealth of information on their website, and while the issues are complicated, their website is very well organized and clear.  You can use their Retirement Planner, use their benefit calculators, or look at and search answers to frequently asked questions.  You can also ask them a question online.

Another issue discussed was how much to save.  For several different retirement calculators, see the calculators section on our retirement resources page, or see the calculators category for related posts on this blog.

The group talked about their retirement planning strategies–some are putting off retirement, others are saving more, many are concerned about the reduced value of their retirement investments.  Only a few members use a professional to help with their investments.

If you decide to get help from a professional, be sure you know what their title means.  FINRA’s information on professional designations explains that “Financial Analyst, Financial Adviser (Advisor), Financial Consultant, Financial Planner, Investment Consultant or Wealth Manager are generic terms or job titles, and may be used by investment professionals who may not hold any specific designation.”

For any professional with a designation after their name–CASL, CPA, CFP, RFS, RIS, etc.–FINRA’s page explains the experience, education, and exam required.  For more on this topic, see the report on our August presentation from attorney Tony Drenzek from the Mass. Secretary of State’s office.

See you next month!

Suggestions from our speaker

Our speaker for tonight’s program, Deb Bloomberg from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, has sent us a list of some of her favorite “Consumer Savvy”-related websites.  Some of these are on our Resources page already; the rest will be added soon!

Some retirement planning resources:

On-Line Tools for Later Life Financial Planning
(Cooperative Extension Service, USDA)

My Money.Gov Retirement resources
AARP info on Financial Planning and Retirement
Planning for a Secure Retirement–Purdue University

Various calculators useful for retirement planning:

Choose to Save® calculators
Bankrate.com calculators
Mymoney.gov calculators    
Federal Reserve Board Mortgage Comparison calculator

General consumer information

Fed’s “Consumer Help” web site
Links to Federal Reserve Consumer Brochures
FDIC Consumer News
Federal Trade Commission Consumer Information
ConsumerWorld
My Money.gov

New Social Security Retirement Estimator

The Social Security Administration recently unveiled a new online calculator providing immediate and personalized benefit estimates to help people plan for their retirement. The Retirement Estimator is tied to a person’s actual Social Security earnings record and eliminates the need to manually key in years of earnings information.

The Retirement Estimator is interactive, allowing the user to compare different retirement options.  For example, a person can change retirement dates or expected future earnings.  Individuals also can print out up to three different scenarios at one time, in addition to information about their benefits at age 62 (current age if older), full retirement age and age 70.

In addition, the Retirement Estimator is secure.  The only thing it provides online is retirement benefit estimates.  It does not show the earnings record information on which the final benefit estimate was calculated, nor does it reveal other personal information.

The Social Security Department’s homepage has also recently been redesigned, making it easier to navigate.  And in the fall, they will be overhauling their retirement application, reducing the average filing time from 45 minutes to about 15 minutes.

Just as a reminder, at our September 17th meeting, Francine Kollias from the Regional Office of the Social Security Administration will speak on “The Basics of Social Security.”

How much to save for retirement?

The standard advice is to be able to replace in retirement 70-90% of pre-retirement income.  But recently the Boston Globe published two articles which took issue with this advice–from both ends of the spectrum–making clear how complicated the planning process can be. 

First, they reported on a study from Hewitt Associates, a human resources consulting firm, saying that we aren’t saving enough, and should aim to replace 126% of our pre-retirement income, because retirees need to allow for increased medical costs and inflation.

But in the second article, just a few days later, they interview BU professor Laurence Kotlikoff, who says we’re saving too much, at the expense of enjoying our youth, because homes are often paid for and expenses drop in retirement.

So who’s correct?  This is where using the calculators comes in handy, since we all have different circumstances. 

On the Retirement Club’s Links and Resources page we list many calculators, and several are particularly good at handling this question of how much pre-retirement income to replace.

Choose to Save Ballpark E$timate® from the Employee Benefit Research Institute’s Education and Research Fund allows you to vary your desired replacement rate (the percentage of your current income you would like to receive during retirement), so you can see how changing this percentage changes the amount you need to save.

Digital Federal Credit Union’s Am I Saving Enough? calculator doesn’t specifically talk about replacement rate, but lets you estimate future expenses to see if your savings will cover them.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s retirement calculator is the most complex, with a worksheet to enter your current and post-retirement in detail, and additional worksheets for pre and post-retirement income and assets.  These are the worksheets shown in the “Taking the Mystery out of Retirement Planning” workbook distributed at the last meeting; if you didn’t get one, the contents of the workbook are also available online.

For a daily dose of retirement news…

Click over to Yahoo’s ”Focus on Retirement“ page, which posts a new article focusing on retirement issues every day.  The page includes the full archives, so you can read past articles as well.  For additional retirement planning help, Yahoo’s Retirement page also includes How-to Guides and Calculators.

Retirement Calculator for People 50-70

Another calculator to try:

The Department of Labor has a great online calculator for people who are age 50 to 70, with worksheets for entering pre and post-retirement assets and savings, and very complete instructions.  It’s a conservative calculator–you can’t estimate a rate of return on your assets above 7%, for example–but it’s more detailed than many others.

The calculator is part of a booklet on Retirement Planning from the Dept. of Labor; we’ll have copies available at our next Club meeting.

Calculate your way to a restful retirement

For a more nuanced view of retirement finances, one that takes into account your own situation, try some of the calculators on the Club’s Resources page.

The calculators range from FINRA’s basic retirement calculator, to the Ballpark E$timate® mentioned by Dr. Alcon in her kickoff speech, to the more complicated calculators from the AARP, the Digital Federal Credit Union, or the worksheets from the U.S. Department of Labor. 

Change your estimated retirement age, monthly savings, projected investment return or other factors, and see how the results change.

Also included are Roth IRA calculators, insurance calculators, and savings, credit card, budget, and life expectancy calculators, among many others.

Please remember that all the calculators are for educational and entertainment purposes only and the results provided are estimates.

How much do you need to save?

How much do you need to save to meet your retirement goal?  FINRA’s Retirement Calculator can help.  Enter the amount you currently have saved, your income goal, any other sources of income you may have in retirement, your age, and a few other variables, and you’ll get an estimate of how much you should be saving.  Set the calculator for retiring earlier or later and see how the numbers change.

On the Club’s Resources page, you’ll find this and many other financial calculators to use for retirement planning.