"When a woman or man loses a spouse, that one person is living a life that was built for two," says Ellen Kamp, who co-founded the W Connection, an online-based support group, which provides information on its website aimed at helping widows navigate these challenges. "This is a rebuilding process that takes years."

Ms. Kamp, whose husband died suddenly in 2006, says among the most important pieces of advice is to not make major financial decisions right away. "Early on, every decision is so emotionally laden."

W Connection Widow's Survival Kit

If you’re looking for a sunny outlook on the future of retirement, you might want to steer clear of Olivia Mitchell. As Executive Director of the Pension Research Council at Wharton, Mitchell has starkly realistic expectations for what the future may hold for Baby Boomers and the generations to come.

“I tell my students, ‘Just don’t get old, don’t get sick and don’t retire. Then you’ll be fine,’” says Mitchell. Not exactly what someone with dreams of beachfront golden years wants to hear.

Nearly 15 percent of the U.S. population relied on food stamps in May, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.

The number of Americans using the government's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) -- more commonly referred to as food stamps -- shot to an all-time high of 45.8 million in May, the USDA reported. That's up 12% from a year ago, and 34% higher than two years ago.

To qualify for food stamps, an individual's income can't exceed $1,174 a month or $14,088 a year -- an amount that is 130 percent of the national poverty level.

The average food stamp benefit was $133.80 per person and $283.65 per household in May.

Most boomers are staying put, largely in the suburbs they settled in decades ago

The propensity to move,, starts to drop precipitously as people leave their early 30s. Roughly 1 in 3 people in their 20s move in a given year; by the time they enter their 40s, that figure slides to about 1 in 10.  As people age into their 50s and beyond, the percentage drops to roughly 5%, or 1 in 20.  

Sandi Rosenbloom, a noted expert on retirement trends and a professor of planning and civil engineering at the University of Arizon said, "the boomers are staying put more than anyone thought,” Rosenbloom says. “People of that generation tend to own their own homes and stay there. The idea that they are moving to the city really comes from the wishful thinking school of planning.

The recession has exacerbated this stay-at-home trend. The number of people moving is at its lowest level since the early 1960s. When boomers do decide to move, Rosenbloom notes, they do so largely for prosaic reasons, such as being closer to children or, more important, grandchildren.

  "Markets will rise and fall, but this is the United States of America. No matter what some agency may say, we have always been and always will be a triple-A country," Obama said. 

It's a simple question....Many people don't know.  Look at your statement or log into your company retirement plan.  Do you have a 401k and a second plan that may be called a Defined Benefit or pension plan?  A lot of people don't understand how many plans and type of accounts they have with their employer.  

Your 401k generally has an account balance that changes every day.  Your pension plan generally provides an monthly income estimate.   Call your plan provider and ask if you have these plans! 

 While over 42 million Americans currently have pensions, 71% of the 500 surveyed by Fidelity did not have detailed knowledge of how their pension plans operate even though over half reported they are depending on those pensions to help pay for living expenses in retirement. 

Here’s how President Barack Obama responded to CBS’s Scott Pelley’s question about whether he could guarantee that Social Security checks would go out on August 3, the day after the government is supposed to reach its debt limit: “I cannot guarantee that those checks [he included veterans and the disabled, in addition to Social Security] go out on August 3rd if we haven’t resolved this issue.  Because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it.”

And Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner echoed the president on CBS’s Face the Nation Sunday implying that if a budget deal isn’t reached by August 2, seniors might not get their Social Security checks.

Well, either Obama and Geithner are lying to us now, or they and all defenders of the Social Security status quo have been lying to us for decades.  It must be one or the other.

Here’s why: Social Security has a trust fund, and that trust fund is supposed to have $2.6 trillion in it, according to the Social Security trustees.   If there are real assets in the trust fund, then Social Security can mail the checks, regardless of what Congress does about the debt limit

Forbes "What Happened To The $2.6 Trillion Social Security Trust Fund?"

The two-month drop in gasoline prices across the country has stopped, according to a survey published Sunday.

The average price of a gallon of regular gasoline is $3.62, down just a penny over the past two weeks, the Lundberg survey found.

The price is a 38-cent drop from the beginning of May, when the average topped off at $4 a gallon.

If you're tapping your retirement funds on a regular basis...here's some strategies from the folks at Forbes:

Worried about outliving your assets? You might consider holding off on tapping into Social Security benefits, working longer and… buying an annuity, according to a study from the Government Accountability Office released last week.

Here are some of the GAO’s  findings:

• Today, a husband and wife both aged 65 have approximately a 47 percent chance that at least one of them will live to his or her 90th birthday and a 20 percent chance of living to his or her 95th birthday.
• Almost half of those near retirement are predicted to run out of money and won’t be able to cover their basic expenses and uninsured health-care costs, July 2010 data from the Washington- based Employee Benefit Research Institute show

For the most part, the possible solutions GAO heard about are not startling revelations.

• For starters, the experts that GAO spoke to recommended annual withdrawals of 3 to 6 percent of the value of the investments in the first year of retirement, with adjustments for inflation in subsequent years. (For more on this, see The Retirement Spending Solution.)
• Next, individuals should delay receipt of Social Security benefits until reaching at least full retirement age, or 66 for those born from 1943 to 1954. Many retirees also should continue to work and save, if possible, particularly those with net wealth, including their home, below $373,000. (For more advice, see The Big Decision: When To Take Social Security.)
• Why it pays to delay. While the Social Security program lets you tap into payments as early as age 62, it doles out full benefits at age 66 and increases payouts for those who wait to age 70. Nearly three-quarters of individuals took payouts before age 65, the GAO said. Monthly inflation-adjusted benefits received at age 70 are increased by at least 33 percent compared with taking them at 66, according to the study. For more on this, go to ssa.gov.

Moreover, the financial experts GAO interviewed typically recommended that retirees systematically draw down their savings and convert a portion of their savings into an income annuity to cover necessary expenses, or opt for the annuity provided by an employer-sponsored DB pension instead of a lump sum withdrawal.

For example, middle-income retirees without traditional pensions, having a net wealth of $349,000 to $373,000, including their home, may have to buy an inflation-adjusted annuity with their savings to have enough money for retirement, according to the GAO findings.

Forbes "How Not To Outlive Your Money"

 Barron's recently identified their 25 best annuities.

They chose five annuities from each of five categories.

We sized up the field mostly by returns, costs and strength of the insurance companies behind the products. As of last week, each of the annuities on our list was doing well by all three measures.

Barron's 25 Best Annuities

The Postal Service announced Wednesday it will suspend the $115 million payment it made every other week to the Office of Personnel Management's retirement system beginning June 24. Cutting the payments to the defined benefits of the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) is expected to save the Postal Service approximately $800 million this fiscal year.

Aside from guaranteeing income for life -- which no other investment can do -- annuities have another advantage: They can generate a higher level of sustainable income than any other investment earning the same return.

How, you may ask, is that possible? Well, some people who buy annuities will die before life expectancy, while others will live longer.

That allows insurers to build into their annuity payouts extra payments known in insurance circles as a "mortality credits." "The insurer is essentially passing along money that would have gone to the people who die early to those who are still alive," says David Blake, director of the Pensions Institute at the Cass Business School in London. "That amounts to an additional return."

The longer you live, the more of those "mortality credits" you get.

Courtesy off CNN Money