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I think in general society there is pressure for all people to be extroverts and alcohol is one avenue that can turn the introvert into a gabbler. At least that's how it was for me as a moderate social drinker. It took me a while to be comfortable with my quietness and ignore the pressures...

Some time ago I read in what seemed like a decent study that INTJ's were the most satisfied with retirement. Seems to fit with the stats here. I'm an Aquarius introvert. I enjoyed the book, Quiet. She has a very good TED talk that is in Bill Gates top thirteen favorite TED talks. Susan...

I understand wanting to gift to children (and grandchildren) when they are at the beginning of their career or are not high earners in order to make their life a little easier. When it comes to charities I have no big desire to have a feel good by gifting to them in retirement. My plan is to...

If I were a market timer, I would sell both and buy a U.S. total stock index fund and CDs. As I am not a market timer, I might still do that. Other than routine re-allocations I have been a buy and hold person for ever, but am now shifting away from intermediate and long term bonds and...

In my experience having had IRAs with both, Vanguard has more lower cost options to invest, but Fidelity has more knowledgeable and helpful support. I had a rather sticky transfer of a BDA IRA to my account and started with Vanguard but eventually turned the transfer over to Fidelity who...

For me there was a "honeymoon period" of bliss after retirement. After catching up with some home projects and knocking a few items off the travel bucket list I sort of slumped into some periods of boredom, especially in the cold winter months. Then I found some rewarding volunteer projects...

As a single person I spend about half of that with home paid off, no other debt, and health insurance from pre-retirement employer. All other things considered, it probably depends on one's lifestyle and there is no real answer. The most common thing I hear is that retirement costs less than...

I have less than 50% in equities. When the market was down below 10,000 I rebalanced into stocks a few times, which worked out pretty good. I slept pretty good through those years when my friends were stressed over watching their 401Ks vaporize. You never know when the next dip will be and...

I have not made a science of it, but probably fall into the percent of remaining savings in investments. I have been using 3% as a benchmark, but have had years when I am below this and years when I exceed the 3% at 6 years into things. When I start on S.S., in addition to a very small...

I am actually a little over-weight in Wellington in addition to a hand full of intermediate term funds, which has it's own issues with bond exposure. Not necessarily looking for a consensus, just some additional lines of reasoning that seem to fit into my way of thinking. Thanks for the thoughts!

I am pretty much a buy and hold guy and haven't made any major adjustments to my portfolio other than some informal balancing for a few years. I noticed my Fidelity intermediate bond fund's asset value YTD has already declined more than any hopes of interest income for the year and am think on...

I've had my finger on the bond fund trigger for a long time now and have just never been inspired enough to get out. I will probably hang on for a while longer. Though I'm probably over-due for a rebalancing of my equities into fixed incomes and can't quite face up to shifting over to any bond...

I have a very old friend who is in a similar situation. We've know each other since second grade and both studied finance at the university. He went into the savings and loan biz and I went back to school to study one of the sciences. Not the playboy type, but definately lived it up...

I'm about 50/50. I don't know how much risk there is in not diversifiying, but it's really no big deal from a simplicity standpoint to deal with two sets of statements and a little extra work at tax time. I like vangards index fund selection, but fidelity also has some low fee index funds...

There is a phrase that possibly was coined by my work mates (or maybe it's been around) that once a personal has reached the tipping point and can retire they are on a "victory lap". I stayed on about a year after my tipping point and in some ways it was sort of nice. I was more liberal in...

Thank you for all of the replys and opinions. Not exactly unanimous, but enough folks thinking like me to make some small changes. I think I will shift some out of my intermediate and total bond funds into short term and also a TIPS fund. It seems like every day there are inflation hints...

I find most of the Shiners beer varieties to be a nice comprimise between the heavy and more expensive micros and wimpy major brewery brands. Though my favorite summertime beer is Coors Light.

Being a conservative investor, I have a decent percentage of my portfolio in bond funds, with a mixture of durations. This has been a sweet spot in the last couple of years with interest rates dropping. I've done poorly in trying to predict interest rates, but the recovering economy combined...

I get my PSA done annually as a part of my routine blood work during my physical. It's not like it's a separate test or any big deal. Just one of the many results from the blood sample. Thankfully, it has come back normal. I have memories of an old work friend who claims his PSA caught his...

Personally, if I truely belived the stock market was headed for 3000 I'd be fully invested in US issued securities. All of the markets are inter-dependent to some degree and if stocks take that big of a tumble I would expect corp bonds, global markets, and real estate to correlate to some...

Reminds me of the old joke where the man proposes to the respectable lady whether she would sleep with a man she didn't love for a million dollars. And she says she might consider it. Then he asks if she would sleep with him for a hundred dollars. Insulted, she slaps him ahd says, what to you...

A long time ago I owned some Calvert funds. They significantly underperformed my traditional funds and were load funds. For that reason I've not tried again. If there were a socially responible group of funds with low management costs and good performance, I would do it again. I just have...

I distinctly recall my all time high in Nov. 2007 because that is when I retired and had used that number to project my withdrawals and earnings. I'm conservatively invested in about 35/65 stock to fixed income and bond. I did manage to get the courage to rebalance some but not totally when...

I am less heavily invested in bond funds, thanks to my 401K stable value fund where I've parked much of my fixed income investment. I don't see anything that concerns me in the next several months, but I may take a look at intermediate or longer term funds with a realtively high percent of...

I'm pretty close to that. I do have some others fixed incomes to add a little diversity and get some inflation protection. My asset allocation is OK by me, and I don't want to change that. I've been retired a couple of years now and everytime I talk to a Fidelity rep about rolling over my...