Tag Archives: retirement

Who Wins—Active or Passive Investors?

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The Investment Race

Many retirees invest passively by buying shares in low-cost index funds that are designed to track selected markets. I have illustrated that approach in previous posts.

Many other retirees, and many younger investors, actively manage their investments. Some retirees do their own research and analyses while others hire brokers, financial planners or other advisers to manage their investments. They hope to achieve superior performance—to beat the market—by relying on extra effort, knowledge and skill.  Continue reading →

Invest in REITs As Well As Stocks and Bonds

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Good investment literature always recommends diversification. It counsels investors to forget about trying to pick the next Apple or Microsoft. That is a guessing game, and the odds are against small investors. Here at Later Living, I have followed the literature and used example portfolios consisting of broadly diversified stock and bond index funds. Today I will include real estate, or REITs, in the retirement portfolio.

REITs are real estate investment trusts, and they owe their modern form to legislation enacted in 1960 and subsequently modified. REITs provide investors easy ways to participate in investments like apartments, office buildings, shopping centers, timberland, and others types of income-producing real estate. Continue reading →

It’s Your Turn—Volunteering Is Easy, Fun and Important

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Learning some new procedures from a young staff member at Meals on Wheels

For retirees volunteering usually beats work. Volunteers are not usually competing against co-workers, are not facing pressure to make economical use of time, are not usually micro-managed or given impossible deadlines and are not ordinarily forced to accommodate oversized workplace egos. Instead, volunteers can focus on the work experience itself. Continue reading →

An Added Burden For Boomers: Your Children’s Retirements

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The Huffington Post published the following piece on May 25. The idea—parents saving for their children’s retirements—left several readers frustrated. Yet parents have always been leaving bequests for their children; this piece recommends a specific type of bequest—a retirement account or annuity, left at death. I am reprinting it here as this week’s post.

The economy is not clicking along like it should—the recovery of the last few years is slow, halting, and uncertain. The United States now has a large cadre of long-term unemployed, and many of them are in their twenties and early thirties. Continue reading →

Later Living in Investment News

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Warren Flick and Later Living Appear in Investment News

Warren was recently interviewed for a short piece in Investment News about empowering individuals to manage their own investments.

Read the full article here. Free registration required, but if you don’t want to register, you can bypass registration by clicking here to Google search for “Warren Flick Investment News” and then clicking on the first result.

Boomers Aging in Place and the Beacon Hill Village

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A Village Aging in Place

There are currently about 35 million people age 65 or older living in the United States. Last year, the leading edge of the population tsunami that is the Baby Boomer generation turned 65. By 2030, the nation’s population of 65 or older will more than double (PDF), reaching 72.1 million people according to the federal Administration on Aging.

The increasing number of elderly Americans means an increasing demand for services, which will strain public resources at all levels. The demand will be great, but it is nothing preparation can’t take care of, and the time to prepare is now. Unfortunately, the economic recovery underway in the U.S. is slow and halting. The consequent lack of tax money means governments will likely be unable to handle the wave of elderly citizens that will soon engulf many communities. Continue reading →

Lessons for Later Life from Madame Bovary

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Courtesy of Jerry Murbach, doctormacro.com

Good literature draws us near and shines imagined light on hidden corners of our common nature. In retirement we have time to occasionally relax with a good book and examine some of our own unlighted places.

One appealing aspect of course is that most dedicated reading occurs in a favorite chair, and who is to know if a reader sometimes dozes off? That’s part of retirement too.

I recently read Madame Bovary, written by Gustave Flaubert and published in mid-nineteenth century France. The book is often on lists of great novels, and it concerns a theme that is always in fashion—adultery in marriage. At the same time, it goes deeper than adultery and treats aspects of human nature that bear heavily on today’s world. Continue reading →

What Do You Do When You’re Ready to Retire, but She’s Not?

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What Do You Do When You’re Ready to Retire, but She’s Not?

Some of you may have seen the Wall Street Journal special report on retirement earlier this week. Several topics were covered, and while we definitely plan to discuss a few of them, one article in particular grabbed my attention. A lot is written about where and how to retire, but this piece talked about a decision many of us take for granted… when to retire.  Continue reading →