JUNE-JULY, 2013

Free Online Retirement Planning Guide

        by Steve Vernon, FSA

 

For the past four months, I've been writing a series of posts that will help you plan for a healthy, secure, and happy retirement. Preparing for a period of your life that can last 20, 30 or even 40 years is a complex and significant task, one that deserves your time and attention.

To help you manage your retirement planning efforts, I've written weekly posts during the past 16 weeks that describe retirement planning steps you can take each week. Each post contains links to additional articles for further reading, so you can control how much detail you want to read.

In effect, the entire series is a free, online retirement planning guide, written by an actuary with 35-plus years of experience working with retirement plans. I don't sell insurance or investments; rather, I develop and present retirement education and research information. I write a blog column, publish books, conduct research at the Stanford Center on Longevity, and deliver workshops on retirement planning topics. These activities all enable me to use my skills and experience to help you, without being influenced by how I'm compensated.

 

Click here for links to the entire series.

Please keep reading for this month's selection of helpful posts and articles. The next article explains why I'm combining a newsletter for June and July -- I've been distracted by my wife's recent medical emergency -- and what I've learned from that situation.

Protect yourself from serious medical conditions

 

My wife's recent brush with death and her encounter with our medical system confirmed insights that we've gained regarding how to protect yourself from potentially ruinous medical expenses. While my posts typically use analysis for my conclusions, in this case, it's my wife's personal experience that provides support for my recommendations. While I normally write about retirement planning strategies, these insights apply to anybody.

 

Read here for warnings about another "silent killer" whose symptoms you don't want to ignore. Then learn about the lifestyle and financial steps you can take to protect yourself and loved ones from serious medical threats.

 

If you live long enough, life will throw you curveballs, no matter what precautions you've taken. But if you're in good shape physically, emotionally and financially, you'll be better able to deal with life's inevitable surprises.

     

Winning your financial independence                 

 

Celebrating our nation's independence got fellow CBS MoneyWatch blogger Allan Roth thinking that it might also be a good time to assess your own independence -- financial independence, that is -- and maybe even change your strategy for achieving it. Read here for details.

 

How Warren Buffet would handle today's market     

 

If you're worried about recent market volatility, ask yourself what the Oracle of Omaha is doing right now. Learn more in this insightful post from fellow CBS MoneyWatch blogger Larry Swedroe.

 

U.S. government annuity for sale            

It may surprise you to hear the feds offer this insurance product, and this one's a great buy with no sales charge. For details, read this insightful post from CBS MoneyWatch blogger Allan Roth.

 

Dave Ramsey's 8% withdrawal rate 
          

Here's an insightful post from Dr. Wade Pfau, professor of retirement income at The American College, about the fallacy of a risky strategy to generate retirement income that's advocated by a popular financial guru.

 

At long last, a forecast worth heeding


A recent Vanguard market outlook is a rarity among prognostications: It offers valuable advice and may earn you money, according to CBS MoneyWatch blogger Allan Roth.

 

Retirement spending: Why rules of thumb don't work  

 

We've all heard the common rule-of-thumb: To retire comfortably, you need to replace 70 to 80 percent of your pre-retirement income. Add a few percentage points for inflation every year, and you'll have what you need to meet your expenses in retirement. But these rules ignore the reality of how retirees spend their money, as you'll read in this informative article from Mark Miller of RetirementRevised.

 

Why do so many investors ignore the evidence?

 

One of the great investing anomalies -- and a great frustration for fellow CBS MoneyWatch blogger Larry Swedroe -- is that the evidence against active management and for indexing (or passive investing) is so overwhelming, yet the majority of investors keep playing a loser's game. Here he offers three explanations for this phenomenon.

   

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Thanks for your interest, and stay tuned for future newsletters that explore how to best live the rest of your life.
 
Best regards,
 





Steve Vernon 
Rest-of-Life Communications

P.S. If you think this newsletter will help a friend, please pass it along.
 

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 Money for Life

    

Turn Your IRA and 401(k) Into a Lifetime Retirement Paycheck

 

My latest book, published in October 2012, answers two of the most important financial questions you'll ever face:

 

How much money do you need to retire?

 

How can you generate reliable income from your retirement savings that lasts for the rest of your life, no matter how long you live and no matter what happens in the economy?

 

Addressing these questions is one of the most critical challenges facing the retirement industry today. 

 

Money for Life is an easy-to-read, easy-to-understand book that outlines specific action steps and includes illustrations and graphs to reinforce the main points. It describes in simple terms the three methods you can use to generate a "retirement paycheck" from your retirement savings. It explains the pros and cons of these methods, as well as their many varieties and permutations. One critical element is the amount of the retirement paycheck you'll be able to generate, which can vary widely depending on the method you choose to generate retirement income.

 

This new book is available in both print and e-book format.  It complements my other published works on retirement planning -- my book, Recession-Proof Your Retirement Years; my DVD, The Quest for Long Life, Health and Prosperity; and my retirement planning website, Money for Life.

 

Please see my website for details on all of my books and DVDs.
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Welcome to

 Our Newsletter!
We fulfill a need for trusted, practical strategies that you can use to plan your rest-of-life (aka retirement).  We rely on the latest research and analyses, and we'll keep it simple!  And that's all we provide; we don't sell insurance, investments or health products, so we can "tell it like it is."

Here's an archive of past issues.

 
Hour Glass & Money

 
Steve Vernon has spent 35 years as a consulting actuary, helping large employers design and manage their retirement programs.  Now he's president of Rest-of-Life Communications, where he specializes in providing unbiased, trusted information about retirement.  He also is a Research Scholar at the Stanford Center on  Longevity, and writes a regular column for CBS MoneyWatch titled  Money for Life.

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For information on keynote addresses, workshops or presentations on retirement issues, visit Steve's website at www.restoflife.com, or email him at [email protected]

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