With unemployment rates finally falling, an economy slowly rising and more seniors looking to supplement their retirement income many companies have decided to alter their 401k retirement investment and senior social security plans. In fact, an Aon Hewitt survey of 210 companies found that nearly 70% of firms plan to put their 401k plans into a serious round of reviews. What does this mean for you? How are you senior social security benefits going to change? Should you move your retirement bonds? Below is a list of the most likely changes most companies will be making to their retirement investment plans in 2011:

Automatic 401k features

Investment Options

Roth 401k

Target-date funds

Annuities

401k Matches

Pension freezes

Looking to buy a new home in your favorite retirement travel spot? Are you trying to  downsize to a smaller home? With retirement mortgage interest rates currently at an all-time historic low, now’s the time to leverage one of your largest retirement assets – your home.

Get the Most from Your Home Sale

• Prepare to negotiate. Leave some bargaining room by asking slightly more – 5% to 10% – than the appraised value.
• Don't overprice. Knowledgeable agents and buyers steer clear of a severely overpriced house, which may keep your house on the market longer. The result: your house can end up being sold for less than it would have a few months earlier.
• Shop for agents. Interview at least three qualified real estate agents to determine their motivations. Some may simply want a quick and easy sale – and will underprice your house to get it.
• Study the comparables. To find the right price for your home, look at three recent sales of houses close to yours in age, style, size, condition and location. How long did each one take to sell? How much of a difference was there between the asking price and the selling price?
• Consider an appraisal. At $250-$500, an appraisal by an experienced, licensed professional will give you the most objective evaluation of your home's value.

Get the Most Value for Your Purchase

• Cash is king. Many people have retirement income or a substantial retirement portfolio that they can use to pay cash for a new retirement travel home. Given the large numbers of foreclosures and short sales, you can really make your retirement budget go far.
• Research the sellers. Find out as much as you can about the sellers. Why are they selling? Would they consider paying closing or other costs? Is the house in foreclosure and bank owned? All these factors can play a part in your negotiations.
• Location, location, location. The home's location will determine its value now – and in the future. Consider any potential home's proximity to entertainment and shopping, the charm of the neighborhood, how the home is situated on the lot, ease of access, traffic noise, the quality of the local school districts and access to public transportation.
• Review your priorities. Price is always important, but it may or may not be the key factor in your purchase. Maybe the square footage or number or bedrooms is more important. Rank your priorities and use them to help evaluate any counteroffer you receive from the seller.

Many investors approach retirement investing with reservations, and when choosing a financial advisor you should be just as wary. When investing for retirement, whether it be in stocks for retirement or retirement bonds,  you want to choose someone you can trust, and build a relationship with over the years. The stock market is finally showing hope instead of despair, making investing your retirement income more appealing than it has in years. If you are looking for a financial advisor, follow these tips to make the process easier.

Avoid Using Friends

Take Time When Choosing

• At least seven years minimum experience
• High quality compliance and regulatory record
• Client-aligned personal values
• Employment stability
• Transparency regarding potential conflicts, pricing and risk
• Focus on and experience with similar clients

No Right Choice

How To Tell If You’re Doing Well

Winning In Retirement Investing

Although we are slowly but surely rising from a financial recession, certain stocks for retirement are still bearing the brunt of an economy not willing to put themselves out there and spend. How does this affect your retirement investments and everyday spending? More than you might think. Supermarkets are reporting quarterly results, and the losses are significant; the Associated Press reported that Supervalu lost $202 million, or 95 cents per share, bringing them to the lowest points their stock has been in nearly 25 years. "This is going to be a challenging year going forward to manage inflation," Supervalu CEO Craig Herkert told analysts Tuesday. "It's just a fact and we believe these inflationary measures are going to impact consumers." The problems arise when Supermarkets have to either take the brunt of rising food prices and somehow make up for it in inventive ways, or raise prices on customers, some of which are unemployed or have limited retirement income to spend. According to the same AP reports, forty million Americans now rely on foods stamps, up 50% from four years ago, and the average price of gas now costs 12% more than it did at this time last year. What this in turn has created is a shift in retirement spending and spending in general.  Customers are looking for stores like Target and Wal-Mart who offer discounted prices on food products who were usually pushed aside against traditional supermarkets.  According to the market research firm Packaged Facts this change in shopping venue has helped these megastores grow at a rate of 10% a year for the past half decade.

If your employer has discontinued matching your contributions to your retirement 401(k) plan, you may be considering switching to a Roth IRA. Switching retirement investment packages can be extremely confusing, and involve taxes and payout. Therefore, why not have the best of both worlds? Contributions from retirement income to your retirement 401(k) come from pretax dollars and grow tax-deferred, which means more money for you. Because your contributions are automatic, you save without even thinking about it (up to $16,500 this year)! A Roth IRA is a good idea as well, allowing you to contribute up to $5,000 of after-tax money. You pay no tax on the earnings or withdrawals after age 59½ so if your tax rate rises when you’re older the Roth can work out to be a better deal than a retirement 401(k) plan. The biggest pitfall with a Roth IRA is the intentions are good, but being consistent with contributions falls short, so you end up saving less. If you can set up automatic contributions, this would allow you to add more to your retirement IRA plan. To maximize your retirement investing, try to maximize your contributions to both a Roth IRA and your 401(k), the retired you will thank you for it. Which do you find the easiest to invest your retirement income in?

Even when you put money away in retirement savings there is still the thought in the back of your mind how your 401k and other retirement investments will be around to supplement your personal savings. However, only about half of the US workforce actually participates in a pension, 401k plan, or similar defined contribution plan from a place of work. How do those who do not have career retirement investments backing their personal savings accounts plan for a sustainable retirement? Here are tips for saving for retirement without help from your company:

1. Take advantage of tax breaks - Traditional IRAs give you a tax break in the year you make a contribution to the account, but you'll have to pay income taxes on that money and the earnings upon withdrawal. Roth IRAs offer tax-free contributions after age 59½.
2. Maximize senior social security - The amount you get through senior social security when you retire is calculated based on your 35 highest earning years in the workforce, but increases the longer you put off retirement. However, if you wait until age 70 there are no further bumps in the amount you receive.
3. Use automatic deposits – Creating direct deposits from your paychecks to an IRA makes the temptation to use your retirement savings less than if you simply held them in a savings account.
4. Aim for low costs - While you can't control the return you will get on your investments, you do have some control over how much you pay in fees. Make sure you compare the expense ratios of similar funds before selecting a long-term investment.
5. Hold equities outside of your IRA - Regular income tax is due on withdrawals from traditional IRAs, but equities held outside of retirement accounts can be taxed at the typically lower long-term capital gains tax rate.

Many doubts may arise during a recession as to the effectiveness of an individual’s retirement investing. The two biggest forms of retirement savings are in senior social security and retirement 401k plans. The retirement 401k plans have been a part of your life since you started a job at 18. However, how to fully get the most out of your plan has changed in the recession. In managing your retirement 401k plan for your retirement investments think first about how the economy has changed. Roger Ferguson, CEO of TIAA-CREF and former Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve, goes through how to manage your retirement investing and 401k plan. The highpoints he discusses involve conditions the economy and workforce must have/offer employees when they are putting together their retirement 401k plan. According to Ferguson:

1. We need to have a system that encourages everyone to save through automatic enrollment and be educated on how much to save
   1. 10-14% of income is what people should set aside for safe and secure retirement
2. Individuals need non-commissioned and objective advice on where to put their retirement investments
3. Companies need to have the right range of economic options in which to place their retirement investing- too many and people freeze, too little and people don’t have enough choices
   1. 15-20 choices is optimal; it allows for risky investment appetites while not overwhelming people with options
4. There needs to be a  vehicle that allows people to have guaranteed income through retirement

How confident do you feel about your retirement assets and your retirement investing? According to a recent survey conducted by MassMutual, women in particular have less confidence in their retirement investing decisions and the stock market compared to men. MassMutual’s online survey of 1,517 defined contribution plan participants revealed that:

• Only 37.3% of participants are confident in making their own investment decisions, down from 42.5% last year.
• Women are even less confident in their own retirement investing decisions, with 25.9% reporting they are confident compared to 44.1% of the men surveyed.
• Meanwhile, 71.7% of men like learning about retirement investing compared to 54.4% of women.
• In addition, 53.1% of women prefer to spend as little time as possible on investment decisions, compared to 35.1% of men.

• Women are more likely to work in part-time jobs that don’t qualify for a retirement income plan. Also, working women are more likely than men to interrupt their careers to take care of family members. As a result, they work fewer years and contribute less toward their retirement, resulting in lower lifetime retirement savings.
• Of the 62 million wage and salaried women (age 21-64) working in the United States, just 45% participated in a retirement plan.
• On average, a female retiring at age 65 can expect to live another 19 years, three years longer than a man retiring at the same age. Retirement savings can increase a woman's chances of having enough money to last during these years.

• Contact Social Security to make sure your earnings records are correct and to find out what your benefits will be at retirement.
• Review your 401(k) and IRA statements to see how they are performing and how much you have in your retirement assets.
• If you are still working, make the maximum contributions to your employer-sponsored 401(k) and other qualified plans and IRAs, as well as saving after-tax dollars in annuities and other financial vehicles.
• If you’re married, work closely with your spouse to ensure that your financial arrangements reflect the possibility of outliving him.

Retirement investing takes a lot of time to learn the trade. The basic mantra of buy low and sell high is good in theory, but how does it exactly take place, and how do you buy low and sell high? There is a lot more of retirement investing than just buying retirement bonds or stocks for retirement. However, knowing the pitfalls before you start can save you a lot of hassle, time, and well, money. The following are five retirement investing blunders to avoid.

1. Mismatching investments with goals
   1. If you’re looking to invest your money now for a quick pay-out a few years down the road, do not invest in hot trends in the market. Considering when you’re going to have to get your money out will prevent you from incurring penalties or fees.
2. Discounting Fees
   1. Fees can be extremely sneaky buggers. Having an investment with only 1-2% fees might not sound like much, but when you have six figures worth of investments, you can use thousands of dollars. Picking no-load funds is one way to save money on fees. Instead of going through a broker, call a mutual fund company directly to purchase a fund.
3. Failing to Strategize
   1. It's time to pick funds from your 401(k) lineup. All you do is pick the ones that performed the best, right? Wrong. Before you research the investment, there are a couple of things to think about. First, plan your investment strategy by determining what asset classes work best for you, and then pick the investments that are best in these categories. Next, make sure you're comparing apples to apples. Some funds don't make as much money as others -- by design. A bond fund cannot compete with a stock fund because of the nature of their respective holdings. However, different types of funds serve different purposes. The bond fund can have a stabilizing effect on one's portfolio.
4. Misreading the Label
   1. Just because you chose to put your retirement investments into a lot of different bonds does not mean you’re diversified. Understanding the differences between asset classes can seriously help you determine the differences between bonds. Learn retirement investment lingo, and you won’t be misled by the labels.
5. Neglecting Research
   1. When looking for good retirement investment options look for the following: type of fund (low-cap, high-cap value), how long the manager has been there, how much the investment costs, minimum investment required, portfolio holdings (list of securities) and performance information.