Change Counts

There are many things to think about when planning to retire. You need money to retire, not age.  That is one thing, but there are a few that aren’t totally concerned with money.  Here is a list of 5 things you need to consider before you decide to retire, and if you should retire early.

1.  Health Status

Being diagnosed with a chronic health problem or a debilitating illness should greatly influence your decision as to when to retire. If you are in excellent health, you may decide to retire in order to travel or pursue other interests before any health problems occur.  On the other hand, if you have a chronic disease you may want to retire just to "enjoy" some of your remaining time.  It can go both ways, a very individual decision.

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I have often wondered how much I would need to retire and I’m sure you have too. It is a difficult question to answer. In my case, I will be getting a pension from the US Government. That is good, but it adds a complexity to the problem.

The main question that has to be answered first is how much money do you need to live on? This is a deeper question still, because so many things go into that answer. Some things to think about.

Will you have a company subsidized health plan that can go into retirement? If not, this could be a much bigger expense than you are paying now.

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In case you didn’t see the link at the top, I am giving away my Used Car Buying E-book. This is totally free. No gimmicks, nothing to sign up for, nothing to do but download this free book.

I wrote a series of articles some time ago on Used Car Buying Tips and then decided to make it into a really cool, easy to read book. I want to give it away as it is my first e-book. I know I could make a few dollars selling it on Ebay, or charging $.50 to download. I know it is a useful book and I enjoyed writing it. There are many links in it to all sorts of great and helpful websites.

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Often, social security benefits are taxable. It really depends on how much money you make.

You can do a quick calculation to see if any of your benefits may taxable as follows.

1. Add up all your income, including tax-exempt interest income, all income besides your Social Security benefits. This includes any taxable pensions, wages, interest, dividends, etc.

2. Add one half of your Social Security benefits to the number you got in “1.” above.

3. Compare this amount to your Base amount. If it exceeds the base amount, it may be taxable. Your base amount is as follows

$25,000 if you are single, head of household, or a qualifying widow(er),

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I did a post a while back on my Live Streaming Camera that I have located outside my house and I thought it was time to update that a bit.  I think I have one of the better PTZ webcams on the net. You may be interested in more of the details about this camera and how I put it all together. You see, I am a hacker.  A good hacker, that is.  I like to take stuff apart, re-use old stuff that others might throw away, etc.  My outside camera is no different.  It is an old video conference camera made by Polycom, model PTZ-2N, that has long since been replaced with “better” ones.  Some other hackers before me figured out how to connect these cameras to a serial connection on the computer to control them.  The camera specs include a 10X optical zoom lens that makes it really nice to use outside.

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In 1990, the price of gold was $423.80 an ounce.  I got that price from the usual benchmark for the price of gold, which is known as the London Fixing.  This is where the price of gold is established; and it is done twice a day by five representatives from bullion trading firms.  The price of gold as of February 29, 2008 was $971.50.  Wow! Big increase!  We should have invested in gold in 1990.  Not really.

Let’s say we had 1000.00 dollars to invest in 1990 and we could pick either gold or large cap growth mutual funds.  Which would have been the smartest investment?

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