Blog

  • A Crucial Decade

    My 60th birthday is rapidly approaching. Yikes! On most every day, I feel much younger than my mental image of a 60-year-old, but the calendar tells the truth. My birth year of 1954 places me squarely in the middle of the Baby Boomer generation, defined as those born between 1945 and 1964. That placement resulted…

  • Half Empty or Half Full?

    Is the average Baby Boomer retiree’s glass half empty or half full? After several years of nothing but gloom and doom scenarios and projections for boomer retirees, there is finally some good news to report…maybe. A  recent survey conducted by Baltimore-based investment management firm T. Rowe Price concluded that many newly-minted retirees are finding that…

  • Live Long and Prosper

    Star Trek fans (especially those of the original TV series that began in 1966) can picture it clearly; the stony-faced, somber man with the oddly pointed ears greeting a fellow crew member with a distinct hand gesture and the phrase, “Live long and prosper.” It seems like a nice sentiment, but, for those of us…

  • To Claim or Not To Claim

    “What’s the harm in that?” you might well ask. These folks have worked hard all their lives, they’ve paid into Social Security for all their working years and they deserve to get some of that hard earned cash back in the form of a government pension. What does it mean to take an early Social…

  • Your Next Move – Deciding Where To Retire

    Your Next Move – Deciding Where To Retire

    And yet, BankRate.com’s annual compilation of best places to retire: reveals that, according to their specific criteria, South Dakota should indeed be a contender, garnering the number one slot in combined scoring of cost of living, crime rate, health care, taxes, weather and personal well-being. Most of us would not have seen that coming. Is…

  • On the Bright Side

    Last week I received an email announcement containing a link to a video segment produced by ABC’s New York affiliate Channel 4. In it, reporter Pat Battle interviewed the residents and staff at a local residential care facility called Bright Side Manor. This piqued my interest for a couple of reasons. The first reason, strictly…