How Much Longer Do You Need to Delay Retirement?        

by Steve Vernon, FSA

Working longer is now the "go to" strategy for affording retirement, as cited by many Americans in recent surveys. But this approach begs an important question: How much longer do you need to work in order to be able to afford to retire? One answer comes from a recent thought-provoking bulletin from Boston College's Center for Retirement Research. Read here to learn how much longer you may need to work -- and what you have to do to make retirement possible.

Please continue reading for this month's selections of helpful blog posts and articles on retirement.

It can be an eye-opening experience to estimate your life expectancy. Depending on a multitude of factors, you may find that if you retire in your mid-sixties, you could easily be retired for 20 years. It's also entirely possible your retirement may last 30 years or more.

Knowing how long you might live is an important consideration for your retirement planning because it could take a boatload of money to be retired for that long. An even more important question: What will you do for all those years? Read here to learn about three handy online calculators you can use to estimate your life expectancy, customized to your lifestyle and circumstances.

What You Can Learn About Investing On the Beach

Investors are waking up to the fact that while past performance of mutual funds has no value for predicting future performance, expense ratios are a very good predictor -- lower cost funds persistently outperform. But expense ratios aren't the only cost of owning a mutual fund. Read this colorful post from fellow CBS MoneyWatch blogger Larry Swedroe for details on just what you need to look for when investing in mutual funds.

Read this insightful post from CBS MoneyWatch blogger Larry Swedroe that summarizes the common attacks on indexing and how off base they are. Despite what you might hear from the "experts" about the benefits of active investing, odds are, you'll make more money from your investments with low-cost, passively invested funds.

For people who are wondering how their mutual funds are forecast to perform, Morningstar recently ranked the 10 largest mutual fund families according to their average score. The new, forward-looking ranking goes beyond the investment research firm's famous star rating system, which only looks at past performance. Learn more in this informative post from fellow CBS MoneyWatch blogger Allan Roth.

July produced two more reminders that you have to be vigilant about protecting your investments from scammers. Read this informative post from CBS MoneyWatch Editor-at-Large Jill Schlesinger for tips on how to protect yourself.

Retirement Planning for the 99 Percent     

A reader recently challenged me regarding my post about how my 91-year-old mother has recession-proofed her retirement, a post that appeared in last month's newsletter. This reader doubted that the average retiree had enough money to recession-proof their retirement. I responded with details describing how both my mother and mother-in-law coped in retirement; each of their situations shows how the middle class of our parents' generation could attain a successful retirement.

I then followed with a post that illustrated how a typical working couple in their sixties could use their financial resources to retire. These examples certainly don't glamorize the situation, and I don't mean to trivialize the serious challenges facing today's older workers. I'm merely showing people the sacrifices they may need to make in order to retire.