Annoe wrote: " jamies, it's not 37% of half...it is 37% instead of 50% so if your DH gets $1000 at full retirement age you'd get $500, but at 62 you'd get $370...." YES. At 66 the spouse can collected 50% of the benefit. Maybe this helps, from the SSA: " A spouse receives one-half of the retired worker's full benefit unless the spouse begins collecting benefits before full retirement age. If the spouse begins collecting benefits before full retirement age, the amount of the spouse's benefit is reduced by a percentage based on the number of months before he/she reaches full retirement age. For example, based on the full retirement age of 66, if a spouse begins collecting benefits: At age 65, the benefit amount would be about 46 percent of the retired worker's full benefit; At age 64, it would be about 42 percent; At age 63, 37.5 percent; and At age 62, 35 percent. " Here is a link that might be useful: Social Security Spouse benefits percentages This post was edited by maddielee on Mon, Apr 15, 13 at 15:24

"Luck" is very often another word for "opportunity". Sometimes you are able to take advantage of it, and sometimes you aren't. It wasn't hard to make money - we're in our late 50's, double-income no kids Boomers, and own a paid-for home, two cars and little debt. But we've made very specific choices in life, some of which paid off (DH's defined benefit pension and retiree health benefits) and some of which didn't. Our overhead is still high - I cringed the last time I totaled up what we spend monthly on various insurance policies - but as I've often said, I was taught to view insurance as risk mitigation, so it's a necessity in our overall estate planning. We've done a lot better on our investments since I really started paying attention to investing and made an effort to learn about it. But when I look back, we left the portfolio unattended until almost too late in life. Fortunately, I picked up the interest in learning about investing before the dot-com bust. So when the bust happened, I didn't change a thing about the portfolio, because I'd learned that panic moves are what kill your ROI. Sure enough, the portfolio got back to even in 18 months and then took off from there. That taught me the value of dollar-cost averaging, too. stinkygdnr, I don't know what OJ would say about your home, but our home was underwater for almost 10 years. It was pretty painful, but we consoled ourselves that heck, we had to live somewhere no matter what. In the end values went higher, although of course they've dropped again this past year. But in the long run, a home usually gives you some appreciation. Plus you get a lot of incalculable enjoyment from living in a place you can remodel and change to your heart's content. We liked our home, didn't love it, until we finished all the landscaping. Then we fell in love with it, finding it a real joy to just sit in the garden in a recliner, reading a book and drinking homemade lemonade. Like I said on a different discussion forum, very often it's the simplest pleasures in life that are the best!

If you sold a stock(s) earlier in the year at substantial profit and you have a stock or stocks that is/are worth less now than when you bought it/them, and you don't consider it wise to continue to hold it/them, perhaps sell it/them before the year end to offset some of the capital gain that you made on the one that was sold earlier. In some jurisdictions you can carry a loss back a couple of years, or forward, to offset capital gains made in earlier years - or later. I'm not big on buying and selling stocks: I've bought some (quality ones) twenty and thirty years ago that I still hold. If a stock that you own has a history of volatile pricing, and you think that the price is unusually high right now, you might choose to sell now, with a view to buying back later, at a lower price (and there'll be two commissions to pay, in any case). Trouble with that is - how far is down? Maybe later the train will have left the station before you choose to get on. Not many of us have wings to enable us to catch it at a station down the line. Hope this helps. Come back to ask us more specific questions, if you like, as it's hard to know what fields of the broad financial system that you are interested to explore at the moment. Stockbrokers like to have you trade ... ... for if you just buy and hold for a long time, they don't make any money in the interim. Except that one broker that I use charges me $125./year for carrying an inactive account and my broker says that there's nothing he can do about it - I'm going to close it, as others don't. Some years ago one broker wasn't charging me an annual fee to administer my self-directed tax-deferred retirement account, but when I had to reverse it into the payout (and no more inputs) section, they were starting to charge an administration fee. So I asked around and found a couple of other carriers who were willing to administer it without an annual fee - carriers whom I was less enthused about using, but I didn't feel it necessary to disclose that piece of information to the current carrier. The carrier said that they could administer it without a fee, as well - and have been doing so, for the last seven years. As a matter of fact, they'll be sending me my annual cheque in a couple of weeks. Guess I'll have to start thinking about what to do with the money, huh? Yeah, right - just before Christmas? Learn how to manage your money effectively, for you, rather than the other guys - it's an interesting hobby ... **that pays well**!! If you don't choose to boss your money - it'll boss you. ole joyful

I agree also. Sometimes I have thought that annual rebalancing was just another form of "churning" although not so blatant. Chisue, brokers make money from your portfolio through sales commissions (when you buy or sell), account fees, and/or management fees paid directly by you to them; and also get some money from the mutual funds themselves for holding your shares -- paid indirectly by you through the fees that the mutual funds deduct from the funds' earnings. I have not been impressed with paying a percentage management fee either. That adds up to quite a lot of $ over time, and generally what you get is a computer generated "plan" and computer-triggered rebalancing ( sometimes to your tax detriment, if not in a tax sheltered account) -- not a real live person looking at your account and maybe noticing that your funds are performing worse than the average and need to be changed. There are "fee for service" financial advisors out there, you pay a set price one time for a certain amount of planning and/or advice. The idea is, they will not be influenced by needs to meet sales goals, generate continuing income, commissions etc. I have no experience with one. It is pretty easy, with a bit of reading and perusing Morningstar and the companies' websites (like TRowePrice), to figure out which funds have been consistently better performers with low expense and management fees. Index funds make it even simpler. Morningstar has easy to use search tools and you can compare funds. I would check out a book from the library to get a basic understanding of all this. Get one that explains what different investments are, different kinds of stocks, what brokers do etc -- not one that is out to tell you a path to riches. Read Money or Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazines. And also call your broker and ask him to explain it to you. He should be willing to give a quick assessment of your portfolio and recommend any other purchases, if you are going to buy through him. Tell him you have x$ to invest and ask for a recommendation based on your current holdings. The danger is, some firms have in the past made a practice of "pushing" certain funds and investments to meet sales targets without regard to the needs of the client. It all depends on the firm and broker. I prefer to have accounts directly with Vanguard and TRowePrice (Fidelity, wellsfargo, and CharlesSchwab are among others I would consider) and just choose and buy myself. I use an on-line tool to decide how much should be invested in bond, or stocks, or cash. Their yearly fees are not very much, some companies are less than others, and if you have enough invested they waive the yearly fee. PS "nearly cash equivalent" funds might be losing your money through inflation. They should not be a majority part of your portfolio unless you don't expect to live that long.