Money

FROM THE ARTICLE: 8 Lessons Retirees Can Learn From Past Bear Markets.Downturns are never fun, but understanding historical trends can help steady nerves. By David Rodeck, AARP. Published April 22, 2025. market downturns can feel like a gut punch. Your portfolio reflects years of savings and earnings, and it’s hard to watch it spiral. What's a retiree to do at such stomach-churning times?Very little, advises Tara Lawson, a wealth strategist at U.S. Bank Private Wealth Management. “It is essential not to panic and remember that market corrections, while unpleasant, are a normal part of investing,” she says. USE THE LINK BELOW TO READ THE ARTICLE: https://www.aarp.org/money/personal-finance/past-bear-market-lessons/

FROM THE ARTICLE: 10 Ways to Fail at Retirement.Avoid these hazards to your money, health and happiness as you step away from work. By Bruce Horovitz, AARP. Published June 03, 2025 It's not hard to find information on the things to do before you retire. Buckets of ink and billions of pixels have been expended explaining them. Yet many retirees still feel bored, isolated or stressed after leaving the workaday grind behind.Maybe what they need is a bit of negative reinforcement — a fail-to-do guide, if you will. There are, after all, many things — critical things — that people manage to not do before or during retirement. Many are financial, but some involve physical, mental and emotional well-being. USE THE LINK BELOW TO READ THE ARTICLE. https://www.aarp.org/money/retirement/avoid-retirement-fails/

Anthem is outsourcing work to vendors in an effort to call their insureds on the phone to sell them other services.  In doing this, they are breaking a cardinal information security rule - they are calling you and asking you to authenticate your identity by giving them your sensitive personal information.  When you call them, that kind of request is certainly in order.  If they call you, they should already have it.    I refused to give it to them (multiple calls).  To quote banks and insurance companies:  “ We will never call you and ask for your personal information.”  It won’t take scammers long to figure out that Anthem is making such calls, and they will start calling too, for the purpose of identity fraud.  Be vigilant!

FROM THE ARTICLE. Court documents say an employee with the Department of Government Efficiency agreed to share sensitive data with an outside advocacy group. By Deirdre Shesgreen, AARP. Published January 21, 2026. AARP is urging the Social Security Administration (SSA) to take immediate steps to ensure Americans’ private data is protected, after revelations that a non-SSA employee signed a secret agreement to share sensitive SSA data with an outside advocacy group last year. In a Jan. 16 court filing, Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyers disclosed that an employee with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) – a federal cost-cutting initiative – agreed to share SSA data with an unidentified political advocacy group. USE LINK BELOW TO READ THE ARTICLE. https://www.aarp.org/social-security/ssa-data-security/

I have seen new rules coming for Senior drivers or already in effect. Although I have not received anything from local DMV office. I saw something on Youtube  Wonder if this is true?

FROM THE ARTICLE. 13 Ways to Stick to Your Retirement Budget in 2026. How to save more and spend less in the new year. By Bruce Horovitz and Daniel Bortz, AARP. Published January 05, 2026. For retirees on fixed incomes, setting and sticking to a budget has never been more critical. Even though income is limited, many expenses are not. Health costs, for example, can be wildly unpredictable for people over 65. Rising prices of consumer goods is also putting pressure on older adults' wallets.If the past is any predictor of the future, there’s lots of budgeting work to be done. When asked what financial challenges they faced in 2024, 28 percent of Gen Xers (ages 44 to 59) and 14 percent of boomers (ages 60 to 78) said they took on debt, and 19 percent of Gen Xers and 13 percent of boomers said they depleted their savings, according to a survey by Credit Karma, a consumer financial platform. USE LINK BELOW TO READ THE ARTICLE. https://www.aarp.org/money/persona

We recently received an email from AARP requesting us to email Congress for the continued funding of Social Security. While this is a worthwhile endeavor, it does not provide a solution and who knows how many folks will actually send the message. So, I am advocating for AARP to be more proactive in how they and their members reach out to Congress. AARP should have some political clout and therefore should use it to our advantage. The unions would be another avenue to pursue! There is a report authored by the Congressional Research Service titled, “Social Security: Raising or Eliminating the Taxable Earnings Base”. This report (https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/rl/rl32896) was updated on December 22, 2021. The conclusion of this report is as follows:“Raising or eliminating the cap on wages that are subject to taxes could reduce the long-range deficit in the Social Security trust funds. For example, the Social Security Administration's Office of the Chief Actuary

I am planning on going on vacation abroad for 32 days.  I get monthly SS checks electronically for retirement only.  I will not make any changes to my payment method.  Do I need to let SSA know when I am leaving and coming back?

Anyone else out there thinking this is the beginning, not the end? I'm researching grad school and dreaming about a new and fulfilling encore career. I'd like to hear your experiences. Did you do an in-person or an online program? Were you accepted by the other students even though you were older? What were the rewards and the challenges?

The website for Social Security used to say that it would take up to 30 days to process new applications for retirement benefits.  In a week it will have been three months.  Now the website says 2-4 weeks, but that has got to still be wrong.I gather from other forums, that a delay of 2-3 months is now normal.What I would like to know is, why?Every time I try to search for information, all of the results are about disability, not retirement.  And not a single results explains why it is taking so long when they already have my entire work history of 47 years, etc.  They have all the information they need.What exactly is it that they do to process applications which turns 2-4 weeks into 2-3 months.Does anyone know why?I cannot work a job right now, my arthritis is too painful.  I can't wait more months to begin getting retirement checks, I will be homeless.

Today I will be discussing a type of scam that doesn't initially set off any red flags but the more you talk the more suspicious it becomes. This scam has been plaguing dating apps for some time; the main premises of this scam is for the scammer to get the victim to send explicit or revealing photos to the scammer. Who is posing as a beautiful woman on a dating site, then using those photos to blackmail a victim usually stating that the scammer will send the photos to loved ones and or your job unless a ransom is paid. I recently found myself as a potential victim of one of these scams. I was using a dating app and I seemed to match with this girl who was not far from me and recently moved from Oklahoma. I began a conversation that would last two weeks before she sent me her phone number. Me being me, I did a reverse phone number search and found that this number was registered to an elderly man in Texas. This was the first red flag I encountered, upon texting her directly the conversa

  

Canceled Consumer Cellular service in October '25 but got a bill in November for service thru December 9th.  Called in Nov. and rep explained billing cycle policy. CC took $54.94 out of my bank account and was told that was the final charge.  Got notified Dec. 26 that another $54.94 would be taken out of my account with the same explanation as I got earlier, a verbal conversation they say they have no record of.  Now (12/26/25) they say the latest draw of $54.94 will be the last.  BOTTOM LINE: No service since 10/24/25 but $54.94 taken out of my account in November AND December.  STAY AWAY FROM CONSUMER CELLULAR!!

Any good discounts for places that you use, given by stores or restaurants?I know some give discounts to seniors on certain days of the week. 

I tried to use the $49/day promo from AARP . Budget did not honor it and AARP customer service could not get Budget to honor it. It costs me over $150 for one day because of this. The car i got was dirty, very low fuel. Rear tire pressures was 31psi on one tire and 36psi on the other. In NYC on a Saturday they close at 3pm so I had to pay for overnight parking. Stay away from Budget and apparently be weary of AARP promotions.  

On June 26, 2023, at approximately 10:17 a.m. I called United Airlines (UAL) customer service at (800) 864-8331.  After a very short wait a person answered, and I began to explain why I was calling.  At a point in the call the connection was lost and my phone immediately received an incoming call.  I answered and the caller apologized for the interrupted connection.  (A subsequent review of my telephone call logs revealed that this call originated from (914) *****).   At the time  I assumed it was still the UAL representative and I continued to explain the issue with my reservations.  He gave me his direct call back number as (845)***** and identified himself as Clive.  He asked, and I provided the UAL confirmation codes, the passenger names, and dates of birth for each passenger.  He placed me on hold and ultimately told me that my reservation was on hold, and that the NZ taxes had not been collected by UAL when my reservations were ma

Hi everyone! I'm new here and really happy to join this community.I'm not from the U.S., but I’ve always been curious about retirement life here. What surprised you the most after retiring? Was it harder than expected, more peaceful, or full of unexpected adventures?I'd love to hear your stories, thoughts, or even a small moment that made you feel truly free.Wishing you all joy and health 🌿– Anna

I live in a condo complex with 3 stories and a subterranean garage where the main drain lines are located. I am on the 1st floor and the drain for 6 units are connected to vertical drain underneath my unit in the garage. Whenever one of these units used their kitchen drain, it flooded the drain pipes under my sink. I contacted the management company at 7:00 am and asked him of any known problems, what it could be and who to contact via email so I could attach a video. He never got back to me. I called the plumber who repiped my drain when I got new kitchen cabinets to see what the problem was. He told me the common drainpipe had to be descaled but he couldn't do it from my unit. He had to remove the cap from the drainpipe and do it from the garage. He also told me it had to be hydro jetted. Which the complete garage had been done the week prior (and probably contributed to my problems) The management company still hadn't got back to me (mind you one time in didn't g

I received a letter from Discover Customer Service. They are adding the following sentence. We may convert your Traditional or Roth IRA CD to a Traditional or Roth IRA Savings and vice versa via a notice to you.  When I called and asked for an explanation, I was told they may terminate my ten year CD, APY 4.3%, and move the funds to a savings account, APY 3.4% and variable.  Can they legally do this?

I used my Barclays AARP Mastercard to purchase a pair of boots from an online vendor which claimed to be located in North Carolina. Turns out it ships product from china. the boots arrived after many weeks, and were of extremely poor quality. Despite a stated return policy, there was no address to which items could be sent and the vendor's customer service rep refused to provide a refund - merely an exchange.AARP Mastercard customer service initially credited the amount, but then required me to produce extensive documentation to verify the problem (which I did) and subsequently just put the charge back on my account, basically rewarding a fraudulent site. I will be cancelling my Barclays mastercard - they do NOT have my back!

Never fear, it's only $1.75 a month but when you scam 1000 customers a month by not giving them the "promised" discount every month, that now turns into $175,000 in pure scammed profits. Shame on AARP, they really don't give a rats ass as long with they get the cut every month. AARP, looking out for their wallet and not their members in SO MANY different ways. 

We as taxpayers, need to ask congress to change the law regarding the IRMAA calculations. In order to reduce our future RMDs, we convert traditional IRAs to Roth IRAs. Even though the money is not in our hand, we need to pay IRMAA penalty. For tax purposes, conversion is taxable income, but for IRMAA, it should not be a taxable income. Instead, the money withdrawn from Roth IRA should be considered for IRMAA. The current tax law is like transferring your money from CD account to a savings account considered as an income.

 Lets say FRA is in April next year and I draw Social Security at that time. Now lets say after 3 months I learn that if I had waited till January when I could have drawn $200 more a month from Social Security. If I stop my Social Security draw after 3 months and then start it back up in January when my pay would be $200 more per month, if I pay back all of the money I had received, would I get the January increase? RT 

Did you know that if you Retire up to 6-months past your FRA, that you can opt to get backpay for those few months that you are past your FRA.  OR you can opt to use these 6-months of delayed retirement credits (DRC) to add to your benefit but this bonus amount will not show up until the following January and then going forward. Of course, if you wait until 70 to claim your Retirement benefits, then you get all of the DRC - in your retirement amount. Any DRC you earn are not considered in anybody else’s retirement benefits but they are included in your Survivors benefits and thus leave your dependents better off dollar-wise. So what was your choice when you decided to retire after your FRA?