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I pitched this idea 15 years ago when I was working, and I've tried it at least once on this board. My former boss sent me this link https://www.wealthmanagement.com/retirement-planning/coming-soon-mortality-pool-40-act-fund Coming Soon: A Mortality Pool in a '40 Act Fund The description is...

I've got an old copy of Quicken - 2003. I downloaded it from a disk long ago. It sits on my PC and doesn't connect to anything else. I tried to open it today. It automatically brings up my most recent active file. I got an error message that says "can't open file". Opening Explorer and...

My sister could file a LTCi claim today. There's a decent chance that she will outlive the maximum benefit period. The policy has a 5% compound inflation rider. Should she file today, or wait and let the benefit compound? My other sister suggested this, and I've never thought about it. The...

More explanation of poll choices. A. Too expensive: Avoid flying for vacations because air travel is just too expensive. B. Fly, but cheap: Willing to fly for vacations, but really watch the fares. Might pick inconvenient date, times, routes just to get the best price. C. Fly coach...

This is an update to (and hopefully the last post regarding) this thread http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f28/another-ss-staff-story-87200-4.html Short story - My first SS retirement payment was last August. It was the wrong amount. The benefit I got this week had the correct amount...

A recent thread brought up the old question "The 4% SWR is far too conservative in most scenarios. If my early results are good, when can I adjust up?" The first thought is to ratchet up. After all, if 4% of my initial assets is "safe", why isn't 4% of my new, higher, assets also safe? We...

About three years ago I filed and suspended so my wife could start spousal benefits. At the time, the SS staffer said "When you want to start benefits, just give us a call. Since you've already filed and provided your birth certificate, we can handle everything over the phone." I'm turning 70...

A recent thread showed, once again, that this board has a wide range of income and spending levels. Discussions about “what we want/need” often bring up a comment like “The median US household income is something in the low to mid $50k range.” I know that our retirement income target is...

I learned something while visiting with a SS rep. This may be old news around here, but I don't recall seeing it before. I filed and suspended at age 66, intending to defer to 70. Since then, some things have changed and I've been considering starting sooner. The rep told me I could start...

Other threads have covered the possibility of a large increase in Medicare premiums for 2016. Today's news: I was interested because I'm over 65, paying Medicare premiums by check, and have been thinking about starting SS benefits in 2016. I could start in late 2015 if that would have been...

When I retired, we had enough money in taxable investments to cover expenses for a few years. We spent that money first, and that put us in the 15% marginal tax bracket. Since I figured we'd be in the 25% bracket eventually, I converted some traditional IRA to Roth IRA, roughly up to the top...

What number do I put into FireCalc? Should I defer Social Security? Life expectancy, or life span, or 10% survival ages, often comes up in our discussions. When people quote numbers, I always wonder what mortality table they used to get those numbers. After all, mortality data comes from...

... and we'd like to fly down and back earlier and later so we can save something on airfare and put the money into a few days in Florida. So, we want to rent a car. Ideally, we'd pick up the rental at the Miami airport and drop it off at the cruise port. But, it turns out that the cruise...

According the the BLS, average spending for single people, ages 60-79, in 2013. CATEGORYOwner__Renter_Both___ Food at home2,7941,8522,302 Food away from home1,3501,0201,138 Mortgage interest1,930121,321 Mortgage principal1,657121,133 Property taxes2,27461,553 Homeowners insurance5166355 House...

We occasionally have "What did you spend last year?" threads. The dialogue in those threads can be interesting, but I also like to see statistics. How do we compare to the "average US couple" of about our age? The US Bureau of Labor Statistics gets thousands of people to fill out very...

you might be surprised by your first payment. When I first read this thread http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f28/odd-ss-payout-vs-retirement-age-graph-73457.html I said this can't be right. After all, for those of us born after 1942, we're supposed to "earn" another 2/3 of 1% of our...

This recent thread http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f28/should-i-buy-life-insurance-and-take-more-pension-money-71941.html is an example of a common question. "I have a pension which pays $X per year if I select the 'joint with 100% to survivor' option, but $20,000 per year if I select...

I started a poll for couples on the issue of planned spending by the survivor after the first death. With 2 weeks gone and 61 responses, I thought that I should say something about the results, which are: Mean: 80.7% Median: 80% Mode: 75% (Note that there are 22 responses above 80% and 28...

Our Windows XP computer is on its last legs. Even surfing is getting harder. I'm looking at new (low priced) laptops and it looks like I'm headed for Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 unless I search really hard. The issue is minimizing the learning curve going from our other computer, which uses...

This isn't about the TV show. I'm assuming that one of us will die before the other. When that happens, the survivor will spend less than we had spent together. So the poll question is (survivor's annual spending) as a percent of (spending when we're both alive). Please use after-tax...

We occasionally talk about longevity insurance (i.e. deferred income annuities with no cash surrender value). I always think that it would be nice if there were multiple companies offering the product, the only one I know of is MetLife. I recently heard about this. There is at least one...

Mankiw points out that it's been exactly 15 years since Greenspan gave his famous "irrational exuberance" speech. He says the total return on the stock market has been 5.55% since then, slightly less than bonds. Using Shiller's data, I get total real return on the S&P 500 as 2.68%. More than...

I got some good advice on this forum concerning cables, so I thought I'd try batteries. I have an older Dell laptop that needs a new battery. Dell's website has replacements for $136. They are listed as 6 cell, 53 watt-hour. eBay has "buy it now" sellers listing "new" batteries, 6 cell, 52...

With all the comments on any thread referencing SS reductions, I thought a poll made sense. Pick the percent that's closest to your number. If your best guess is 90%, pick 100%. If your best guess is 85%, pick 75%. I intend that "expecting" is your best guess. Most of us will make plans...

I'm not sure if this belongs here or in the "Money" forum, but --- I recently bought a new computer. The computer has HDMI output that I want to connect to a monitor and a TV that have DVI input. So the computer store has a 6 ft HDMI to DVI cable for $40.00. OTOH, Tartan Cable online has...