Retire with MONEY

These Are the 5 Best Eco-Friendly Places to Retire by Matt Krantz Finding the best place to retire used to be pretty simple. Lots of sunshine? Check. Affordable health care and housing? Check. But the list of what makes a desirable place to retire today includes more than just a sandy beach and an inexpensive cost of living. A city’s ecological sustainability, or “greenness,” is a key factor, too.

The Stock Market Is Having Its Worst Year in a Decade. Here's What to Do Now, Depending on Your Age by Sergei Klebnikov The stock market has been pretty scary since October. Don’t panic: There are smart, simple moves you can make to protect your portfolio, no matter what age you are. For the first three quarters of 2018, it looked like another great year for U.S. stocks. As recently as September 20th, the S&P 500 hit an all-time record.

10 Easy Ways to Make Extra Money in Retirement, According to a Business Coach by Luisa Zhou Do you want to make additional income in retirement? Or maybe you just want something to do now that you have more time on your hands, and it wouldn’t hurt if that something made you extra cash while you’re at it. Either way, the good news is that you’ve got plenty of options that don’t involve dealing with an alarm clock or a commute.

This Retired Couple Makes $75,000 a Year as Airbnb Superhosts — and They Give It Away to Charity by Elizabeth O'Brien Many older adults are joining the sharing economy for extra income. But for James and In Ja Yates, sharing is more than just a gig — it’s their whole way of life. The L.A. couple, ages 80 and 79, respectively, share two units of their sprawling, 100-year-old home on Airbnb.

This Is the Only Time You Should Accept an Early Retirement Offer by Matt Krantz If you’ve been looking to make the math work on an early retirement, you just might get your wish. Drugmaker Pfizer and automaker GM recently announced buyout offers for long-time employees, and experts say this could just be the start. This year, companies plan to cut 46,100 jobs due to voluntary severance, which includes buyouts and early retirement offers.

Here’s a not-so-festive item on the holiday to-do-list of anyone age 70 ½ or older: take withdrawals from your retirement accounts by Dec. 31. The IRS calls these required minimum distributions, and they’re counted in your taxable income for the year. You’ll pay a steep fine for blowing the deadline (unless it’s your first year taking them, in which case you have a grace period until the spring). So make some time amid the season’s merriment to get it done.

The One Thing Married Women Should do to Protect Their Finances Before They Retire by Ryan Derousseau When Kathleen M. Rehl lost her husband, she remembers, beyond the grief, how much fear she felt. There was an underlying burden of worrying whether she would survive financially. That was unexpected, considering Rehl was a financial advisor. She was 60 when her husband died at age 72. The two ran a financial advisory firm together, and she didn’t know if it would survive his loss.

What would you risk to follow your dreams? Karen Schaler walked away from an Emmy-award winning career as a broadcast journalist--and cashed out her 401(k)--to move to New York City and establish herself as a screenwriter at age 40. You might have heard of some of her work, especially at this time of year: Schaler wrote the Netflix mega-hit movie, “The Christmas Prince,” which premiered in November 2017.

Investing Legend Jack Bogle Says There’s a Big Problem With Index Funds By Sergei Klebnikov A generation ago Jack Bogle invented the index fund. Now he’s warning his creation may have a negative impact on the stock market. Bogle, who founded The Vanguard Group in 1974, wrote Thursday in The Wall Street Journal that if current trends continue, index funds will soon own half of all U.S. stocks.

This Savvy Credit Card User Booked a $33,000 Luxury Trip Around the World for Free. Here's How by Alix Langone Dona Dower didn’t care where she went—as long as she flew on an Etihad plane. Etihad Airways, the Middle Eastern carrier, is famous for the luxurious first-class apartments on its double-decker jets, which feature real beds, personal minibars, caviar, and even full showers.

It’s a good practice to keep three to six months’ worth of living expenses in cash, whether you’re retired or not. Financial advisors often call this an emergency fund for unexpected expenses. But I’d argue that some expenses which typically get labelled as “unexpected” don’t really belong in that category. Take dental work and home repairs, for example.

Every so often, readers write me in hopes that I can help them avoid paying taxes on their retirement savings. Surely, they write, there’s a way to circumvent a tax bill on the money in their tax-deferred 401(k) or IRA? If I had such clever strategies up my sleeve, I’d probably be retired myself, kicking back in some tropical paradise after having made millions off my consulting work. You see, Uncle Sam doesn’t let us off that easy.

This 101-Year-Old Has Been Retired for 40 Years, Has a Healthy Savings Account, and Is a Track Champion. Here's His Impressive Path to a Rich Retirement By Elizabeth O'Brien Orville Rogers was forced into mandatory retirement from his pilot job at age 60. Refusing to let company policy keep him grounded, he flew his own planes until age 79. “I owned three different airplanes, and I enjoyed every one of them,” says Rogers, now 101, of Dallas.

This 105-Year-Old Martini Lover Has Been Retired for Almost 40 Years. Here Are Her Smartest Money Moves By Elizabeth O'Brien Patricia Lyons Harrington recalls applying for a credit card in the 1950s, when she was a single, middle-aged school teacher in Boston. The company turned her down, since gender discrimination was as common in credit transactions as in other aspects of society. More than a decade later, the tide began to turn, and the same company sent her a solicitation.

This Is the Cheapest and Most Scenic Retirement Destination Abroad By Paul Schrodt It’s hard to deny the itch to flee expensive cities in the U.S. for retirement abroad. The perks are obvious: Your savings can go a lot farther in many places overseas, especially when the exchange rate is favorable. You can live somewhere cosmopolitan and tropical for a lot less than you can in, say, Miami.