Author Archives: Jay Butchko
Should Affordable Housing For Seniors Be Part Of Your Estate Plan?
If you own your house with little or no mortgage debt, then living comfortably in retirement is within reach, even if you have no employer-provided retirement savings, and your only income will be your Social Security check. If you need more cash, you can take out a reverse mortgage or ask family members to… Read More »
Plan For A Boring Retirement, And You Will Never Be Stressed
Our culture idealizes youth so much that most people dread the thought of retirement. Calling it the Great Resignation only helps when you are young enough that if you nope out of the workforce today, you will still be young enough and healthy enough that you have many long years of income-earning potential ahead… Read More »
Are Seniors And Mortgages A Bad Mix?
When you are retired, you no longer have to deal with a daily commute during rush hour, professional networking events that eat up your limited free time, or waking up to emails notifying you that you must urgently fix a problem that your insufferable, overpaid boss created. Retirement is not all peaceful walks on… Read More »
Don’t Let Housing Drama Tank Your Late In Life Romance
Romantic relationships are so much simpler when you are over 50, not least because both partners are financially independent from the outset. You don’t have the problem that so many young couples face, where you have just taken the first steps toward being in charge of your own finances, and then you must figure… Read More »
The Best Boring Retirement Gifts You Can Buy For Yourself Or Your Spouse
The people who show off their wealth are not the happiest or wealthiest ones. The former classmate of yours who posts pictures on Facebook of all the jewelry and new cars that her husband buys for her is probably doing it because she needs her Facebook friends to convince her that he truly loves… Read More »
Is A Cash Diet The Key To A Stress-Free Retirement?
When you were banking on your old junk coming back into style, you made a wise investment. Those vinyl records that your ex-spouse always wanted to get rid of, since you already had the same albums on CD, are now worth a fortune, and your grandchildren even want to listen to them sometimes. The… Read More »
Look Out For Your Smile, Because Medicare Certainly Won’t
As you approach retirement age, your daydreams about retirement focus increasingly on the things you will not have to do. You won’t have to commute to work, which means more sleeping in late and less money spent on gasoline and on the dry cleaning of work clothes. Attending social events at work will no… Read More »
LLCs And Your Estate Plan
Now that you are retired and the mornings you spend scrolling through news headlines are longer than they used to be when you were working, you have started to become aware of the go to headlines that seem to pop up whenever it is a slow news day. It seems like, every few weeks,… Read More »
What Does Retirement In Florida With $500K In Savings Look Like?
Anyone who tells you that anything less than retiring with one million dollars in savings is poverty as their head in the clouds. Most people do not have nearly that much; the average amount of retirement savings for 65-year-olds in 2024 is $200,000, and a substantial number of sexagenarians have no retirement savings at… Read More »
55 Plus Communities Are Not The Paradise You Think They Are
The layout of single-family homes is perfect for a bedroom community. They are designed for people who spend 40 hours per week somewhere else, at work or school, doing something that takes their minds off of the loneliness of suburbia. Once your children have grown up, you can distract yourself from the emptiness of… Read More »