| Top Beach, City, and Country Retirement Spots and Are health insurance premiums tax-deductible? |
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When considering the idea of retiring to another country, two factors are most important: how much money you have to live on in retirement and the kind of lifestyle you would enjoy best.Perhaps you dream of the lapping Caribbean Sea just beyond your doorstep or the sound of the crashing Pacific surf outside your bedroom window. Maybe your ideal retirement lifestyle would be a country town, where wildflowers cover the hillsides and the temperatures are pleasant year-round. Or, perhaps, you wouldn't be happy in a place where you couldn't dine out three nights a week and enjoy regular visits to the theater, museums, galleries, and cafes.Once you know the kind of retirement lifestyle you want, you need to select a place that suits your budget. Consider these recommendations for beach, city, and country retreats suitable for every budget. [Read the full article] "It is change, continuing change, inevitable change that is the dominant factor in society today," the famous science fiction writer Isaac Asimov once pointed out. In the realm of retirement planning, that wise observation is as true now as it was when Asimov related it.Indeed, the traditional retirement - leaving work at 65, moving somewhere warm and spending your golden years winding down - is quickly becoming a thing of the past. For example, among employed males age 64, the likelihood of retiring at 65 was recently shown to be only 7% for those born between 1943 and 1947. For this group, which is around retirement age right now, the chance of actually being retired at 65 is much lower than the 56% probability for men born between 1913 and 1917, according to a July 2010 Urban Institute report.Why do Americans have the tendency to retire later? There are a lot of reasons, like a tough economy, which can derail anyone's retirement plans. [Read the full article] Piggy Banks with Westpac logos on the side are seen at a Westpac Banking Corp branch in Sydney November 4, 2009. (Reuters) - A few months ago Yves Colon and his wife Melissa had a number of retirement accounts from previous jobs scattered among different financial institutions, and only a vague idea of what to do with them. "We really didn't have a sensible, diversified investment strategy," says Yves, 59, who teaches journalism at the University of Miami. "Even though we follow the markets casually and have done some investing, we weren't giving our money the oversight it really needed." When they started searching for an adviser to manage their mid-six figure account, they learned that charges of 1.5 percent -- about $7,000 per year -- weren't unusual. The good news for people like the Colons is that there are less expensive solutions out there, even as investors transition away from commission-driven advice to fee-only, or fee-based approaches. [Read the full article] 
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