New to the forum

[cletis]

Hello, I'm Cletis and have a ton of questions. I just turned 40 this summer and dreaming of retirement. I' don't really have anyone to talk to about retirement subjects in my age group. Cletis

[Miss_Lala]

Welcome!

[travelover]

Welcome. Be sure to read the FAQ, use the search function and look at responses to other initial posts. This will help you formulate your questions and get you better answers.

And don't pay too much attention to the political threads. That is how retirees blow off steam.

[TexasGal]

Welcome cletis!

As travelover said, just pick and choose the threads that interest you and blow right by those comments that seem offensive or argumentative. There are a lot of very intelligent and opinionated people on this forum who don't have any problem expressing their opinion about anything and everything, including political and religious matters, which can sometimes get pretty heated discussions going.

This is a great group of people and a fabulous retirement resource. You might also go back and read some of the really old threads that are still just as good today as they were at the time. Good advice ages well!

Jump in whenever you are ready.

TG

[Fred333]

welcome to the forum. We are all here to help.

[SteveR]

Cletis,
Welcome to the forums. Glad you found us and as you can see there are a lot of other folks here with a similar mindset. Feel free to use the Search function to find any areas of interest as chances are they have already been discussed in depth.

Planning for retirement is a major task and requires a lot of knowlege to do it right. You can waste a lot of money to fees that are not necessary which will allow you to maximize your gains over time.

Don't forget about tracking your expenses as a way to get a handle on what you spend today so you can find ways to cut out the fat and allow more savings. Also, you need this information to see what your expenses will be in retirement which then determines the size of nest egg you need.

Good luck and welcome to the forums.

[cletis]

Thanks for the welcome all. That's one thing we recently started doing. Tracking all of our spending. Cletis

[samclem]

Originally Posted by cletis

Thanks for the welcome all. That's one thing we recently started doing. Tracking all of our spending. Cletis

One of the items all of us went through on the way to retirement is figuring out how much we'd need each month during our retirement. One thing you'll see in the old threads here: The rule of thumb of "xx% of your income" is just stupid. By tracking your expenses you'll be in a much better position to figure out what you'll need to spend in retirement. Plus, the obvious plus of helpign you find money now to stash away (Honey, did you realize we spend $100 per month on video rentals?")
Welcome!