New Platinum Links Posted
... and Why I Have a Website

As promised during last week's review of PC Magazine's top ten boomer websites, I have completely revamped and expanded the Platinum Links page on our website. It was long overdue and therefore a pretty big project, but it's done - or at least done enough to post... Is anything on a website ever really done? ... but I digress.

For you newcomers, let me explain the relationship between this blog and the website. This blog, like most blogs, is sort of a stream of consciousness flow of writing. Many articles represent fleeting thoughts that stand alone. But sometimes, you get on a topic, you think about it, you write an article, then maybe a part two. You get some comments, you write some more. Then when you have thoroughly beaten a topic to death, um, I mean, covered it exhaustively, it sits there in chronological pieces on your blog.

But if you really have covered a topic to a conclusion, you may want to massage it into something coherent for posterity. That, to me, is what the web site is for. Blogs are good at many things, but they are not great at organizing information. Websites are, or at least can be better organized.

So that's what i did today. I organized the links I've been cranking out into something more coherent. It was a lot of work... but you're worth it. :-) Bob

P.S. In the process, I found a great new blog/website, very similar to Platinum Years, which I'll tell you about tomorrow.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Benefits of Delaying Social Security

I occasionally plow through dreary assessments of how little we boomers are inclined to save and the risks that creates with our retirement prospects…. I do this reading for you, so you won’t have to :-) Occasionally a gem of wisdom will pop out, making it all worthwhile. And those, of course I will pass along. So from an Economic and Budget Issue Brief from the Congressional Budget Office, dated March 14, 2004, entitled “The Retirement Prospects of the Baby Boomers,” comes an excellent and concise summary from a section entitled “The Effects of Delaying Retirement”: "For households facing shortfalls in their retirement savings, relatively small changes in behavior can have surprisingly large effects. Because people who retire at 62 can expect to live another 20 years, each year they postpone retirement reduces their need for retirement savings by about 5 percent. An extra year of work also increases their Social Security benefits by several percent. Taken together, those effects ...
Read more

Pay Back Your Social Security
It Could Be the Best Annuity You Could Buy

The above title was the original title of yesterday's post , which later became " Social Security Decisions: Important But Not Irrevocable - You Have Much More Flexibility Than You May Think ." I actually posted it with the "Annuity" title above, but after sleeping on it overnight, I realized that yesterday's article was really about flexibility, an important issue in its own right. I have written before about flexibility. The general rule is, "Given two equally attractive decisions, always choose the one that is more "reversible," (i.e. allows you to change your mind later) Flexibilty is a key element in any personal financial decision, and retirement decisions are no exception. In fact, I think flexibility becomes MORE important as you get older, as youre "wiggle room" for creating alternatives diminishes the older you get. And I wrote on this before, in my original article, " Don't Do It ," as a major reason why ...
Read more

Social Security Decisions: Important But Not Irrevocable
You Have Much More Flexibility Than You May Think

I have written several times before on this subject, and my basic premise has been that many boomers are making a big mistake by taking social security at age 62, at least those who don’t fall under the three exceptions to the basic rule of “ Don’t Do It .” Then on February 1st , I wrote about the ability to UNtake social security by basically suspending payments, stopping the clock as it were, and gaining credits in the form of increased future payments. For example, if you start taking payments at 62, and suspend them at age 63½ for three years, at that point you would be 66½ and earning pretty much as if you had started at 65. Now comes an article from Forbes.com entitled “ Trade In Your Social Security Check ,” which describes how you can not only stop the social security clock, but you can RESET IT TO ZERO by paying back all of your previously earned social security checks WITHOUT INTEREST. Which certainly answers one of my original arguments about flexibility. You really c...
Read more