You're in Control of Your Retirement Future Inside are twenty major financial decisions that could profoundly impact your lifestyle over the next forty years. For many retirees, these decisions come as a surprise and must be made hastily without proper consultation. But by reading the expert, commission-free advice in this fully revised and updated edition, you'll learn how to manage your assets and prepare for the best possible retirement. Do I have enough money to retire now? How will I cover my medical expenses during retirement? When should I begin taking Social Security? How much should I invest in stocks, bonds, and cash? What criteria should I use to identify the best investments? Should I cancel my life insurance policy? Should I pay off my mortgage at retirement?

*This is the Revised 2024 Book Edition* The Retirement Planning Guidebook helps you navigate through the important decisions to prepare for your best retirement. You will have the detailed knowledge and understanding to make smart retirement decisions: - Understand your personal retirement income style, which can then help you navigate through the conflicting opinions about retirement strategies to choose your right path. - Learn about investment and insurance tools that may best resonate with your personal style. - Determine if you are financially prepared for retirement by quantifying your financial goals (annual spending, legacy, and reserves for the unexpected) and comparing them to your available assets. - Make smart decisions for when to start Social Security benefits, which could potentially support an additional $100,000 or more of lifetime income from Social Security over your lifetime. - Develop a plan for making the best initial and ongoing choices from the alphabet soup of Medicare options, as well as how to find health coverage if you retire before Medicare eligibility. - Assess where you wish to live in retirement and whether there are helpful ways to incorporate housing wealth into your retirement strategy. - Decide how to manage your long-term care risk between self-funding, Medicaid, or private insurance, and take steps to support living at home for as long as possible. - Understand how to manage your taxes to pay less, to avoid common pitfalls, and to have more for your lifetime and your legacy. You will be able to apply tax diversification, asset location, tax bracket management, and Roth conversions to enhance the sustainability of your retirement assets. - Get your finances organized and understand how to get your estate and incapacity planning documents in order, including your will, account titling, beneficiary designations, financial power of attorney, and advance health care directives. - Identify whether there is a role for trusts in your estate plan for reasons related to avoiding probate, controlling how and when assets are disbursed, obtaining creditor protections, or helping to manage estate taxes. - Prepare for the non-financial aspects of retirement, including the need to find purpose and passion, to understand if there is a role for work in retirement, to enhance relationships and social connections, and to maintain an active and healthy lifestyle. Retirement has an entire vocabulary associated with it. We'll demystify the 4% rule, sequence-of-return risk, time segmentation and buckets, reverse mortgages, income annuities, variable annuities, fixed index annuities, long-term care insurance, living trusts, irrevocable trusts, budgeting, the funded ratio, Medicare Advantage, Medicare supplements, diversified investment portfolios, Roth conversions, the hazards of the Social Security tax torpedo and increased Medicare premiums, buffer assets, 401(k) plans and IRAs, the rollover decision, distribution options for defined-benefit company pensions, RMDs, QCDs, aging in place, cognitive decline, and so much more. The Retirement Planning Guidebook does not let important matters fall through the cracks. This is a comprehensive look at the key retirement decisions to achieve financial and non-financial success. You will have the foundation to make the most of your retirement years, and I hope you'll be able to do something great!

As defined contribution pensions become prevalent, retirees are increasingly responsible for managing their own pension assets and thus their own financial literacy becomes crucial. Based on empirical evidence and new research, the book examines how financial literacy enhances retirement decision-making in ever more complex financial markets.

"Everyone in the workforce today should read this book!"--Horace B. Deets, former Executive Director, AARP With the right planning, retirement can be the happiest time in life. Award-winning Washington Post retirement columnist and financial expert Stan Hinden helps you guarantee that your retirement will be as enjoyable as possible. How to Retire Happy provides answers to all your complicated retirement questions. From Social Security and Medicare to long term care insurance and estate planning, Stan covers all the bases. This fully updated and expanded edition of the bestselling guide includes: Practical advice on the 12 most important decisions to make before retiring Guidance on the critical emotional, psychological, and health issues of retirement The latest information on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and changes to the rules governing IRAs and 401(k)s Expert tips on how to arrange an estate to save money on taxes and probate

This book reviews, summarizes, and integrates a diverse literature on the topic of retirement and provides a coherent view to better inform researchers and practitioners. Organized around three phases of the retirement process--pre-retirement, retirement decision-making, and post-retirement--the chapters examine economic, sociological, gerontological, and psychological theory and research. Topics discussed include: types of retirement, retirement planning and preparation, early retirement incentive programs, the economics of the retirement decision-making, and work after retirement, among others. Contributors include Jerome Kaplan, Kenneth Shultz, Harvey Sterns, and Linda Stroh.