Closing out 2017

We are starting a new year. 2017 was a good one for retirementstewardship.com. We were able to stay on pace publishing an article about every two weeks, and also added a lot of new subscribers. So, first and foremost, I want to express my gratitude to every one of you who are subscribers and regular readers.

The primary purpose of the blog is to encourage, inform, educate, and inspire you as you plan for, or live in, retirement, and to do so from a distinctly Christian perspective. I hope that you have found the articles and resources I have provided helpful in those ways.

As we close out 2017, I thought you might like to see a list of the most popular articles I published this year, especially if you missed an update or meant to read one and didn’t get to it. (A list of all articles published since 2015 is available HERE.)

Sometimes, we need to hear the hard truth about certain things. Here is a recent article that presents some hard truths about retirement:

• 7 Hard Truths About Retirement

I did a series on Financial Advisors. The decision to hire an advisor is one of the most important retirement stewardship decisions you will make. If you are using one to manage your investments or thinking of hiring one, these articles may help:

• Financial Advisors – Part 3: How to Choose One

• Financial Advisors – Part 2: How They’re Paid

• Financial Advisors – Part 1: What They Do

In the “hard truths” article, I talk about the risks to our retirement savings. Two of the most insidious are “sequence risk” and “inflation risk.” I tackled those in these articles:

• Inflation: A Quiet Threat to Retirement Stewardship

• If You’re Close to (or in) Retirement You Need to Understand “Sequence of Returns Risk”

Many of us struggle with saving for retirement. Should we save? If so, how much? What does the Bible have to say about it? In this article, I tried to address those difficult questions:

• Can Retirement Stewardship Make you a Rich Fool?

According to the Social Security Administration, I am approaching my “full retirement age.” In this article, I listed the big questions that I need to answer to decide if I am ready to retire:

• The 8 Questions I Need to Answer Before I Decide to Retire

When to start receiving Social Security benefits is another crucial retirement stewardship decision. In this article, I explain why it is almost always wise to wait as long as you can.

• Why You Should Consider Delaying Collecting Social Security Benefits

This series article offers some practical, life-stage-specific advice on being prepared for retirement:

• The Most Important Thing to do in Your 60s and Beyond to Retire With Dignity

• The Most Important Thing to do in Your 40s and 50s to Retire With Dignity

• The Most Important Thing to do in Your 30s and 40s to Retire With Dignity

• The Most Important Thing to do in Your 20s and 30s to Retire With Dignity

As a group, pastors tend to be woefully unprepared for retirement. If you are a pastor, or responsible for caring for one in your local church, you may find this article helpful:

• Pastors and Retirement Stewardship

Of all the spiritual virtues, contentment is one of the most important:

• Contentment with Retirement Stewardship is Great Gain

If you have any suggestions for future articles or specific questions on topics you’d like for me to try to address in 2018, just shoot me an email at [email protected].

Finally, in 2018, remember to, "Save Diligently, Invest Wisely, Give Generously, Live Abundantly!"