Courtesy of FedSmith.com 

Here is a quick summary (stated by percentage of gain or loss) of the monthly returns for the TSP funds:

The lifecycle funds are on a similar track for the month of June. Here are the results (in percentages) for the L funds in the past month:

We've received several e-mails and noticed a lot of searches for MRD information this month.  These retirement withdrawals are important- we've provide the IRS tables to help you with the calculation and some online calculators too.

Ed Slott is a featured writer on IRA issues in several magazines we read .  Here's another helpful update he's provided on MRD retirement distributions.

Bank of America said it will soon launch nationwide a reverse-mortgage product -its offered to customers in Arizona since November. The product, called Senior Equity Maximizer, offers loans on up to $10 million of home equity, said Colin McCormick, reverse-mortgage product executive at Bank of America.

CNNMoney.com provides a conversation with Ben Stein.

What I generally recommend for the noncash portion of your portfolio - and this has been unbelievably successful - is a mix of various index funds and exchange-traded funds [ETFs], with roughly 25 percent in an S&P 500 index fund from Vanguard or Fidelity; 25 percent in a Vanguard or Fidelity total stock market fund; 25 percent in EFA, which is an ETF for developed overseas markets; 15 percent in EEM, an emerging-markets ETF; 5 percent in ICF, the ETF for real estate investment trusts; and 5 percent in XLE, which would be your energy fund.

I'm not a big lover of bonds because I think the risks involved in buying long-term bonds are tremendous, and the payment from short-term bonds is trivial. That said, you should have 20 percent of your portfolio in cash. I would say if you can get 5 percent or more on your cash in a CD or savings account, go for it. That way, you have it to tide you over if you lose your job or your health worsens.

We're always looking for tools and information to help investors calculate their "Retirement Number."  Most brokerage and mutual funds companies are providing tools on their websites for this calculation.  Our Calculators, Links and Tools page will provide a good overview too.

Here's a quick way to calculate your number in today's Sunday newspaper. 

Courtesy of the Wall Street Journal

Let's see what this math would look like for a couple -- we'll call them Andrea and Scott -- who are a year or two away from retirement and are making about $80,000 (combined) a year: Multiplying that income by 0.8 shows they will need $64,000 a year in retirement. Multiplying $80,000 by 12 shows they will need a nest egg of $960,000.

It's important to note that we start with a big assumption: that the average American can, in fact, live comfortably on 80% of his or her pre-retirement income in retirement itself. While the rule of thumb has long been that most of us will need about 70% to 80% of our pre-retirement earnings once we leave work, this assumes that about 20% to 30% of our money while we're working goes to things like taxes, transportation and savings and that all those bills will drop off in retirement.

CNNMoney.com provides more ideas on generating retirement income from your 401k or IRA.

Here's how the strategy works: You put a portion of your 401(k) balance into an immediate annuity and then invest the rest in a diversified portfolio of stocks and bonds (or, more likely, stock funds and bond funds). The annuity gives you payments that won't run out and that, combined with Social Security, can fund much of your day-to-day needs.

In that case, you would turn over your 401(k) balance to an insurer that would promise you monthly checks for life (or, as long as either you or your spouse is alive, if you choose the joint-and-survivor payment option). Today, for example, a 65-year-old man buying a $250,000 immediate annuity would receive lifetime fixed payments of roughly $1,700 a month.

if you're one of the millions of Americans (like me) that don't have a pension plan through your work,  consider taking a portion of your nest egg and creating an annuity income stream.  It's a solid strategy and as Bankrate.com explains may lead to "retirement happiness."

"People who derived much of their retirement resources from an annuity exhibited fewer depression symptoms," says Panis about his 2004 study of defined-benefit pensions. "At any given level of income, just having a portion of retirement resources in the form of annuities was perceived as having more money."

Some employers offer an annuity feature to workers in their 401(k) and 403(b) retirement accounts when it's time to withdraw the assets. With these plans, savers can opt to receive their accumulated assets or a portion of their assets as a lifetime annuity. Larger corporations are more apt to offer this feature.

But the most common way to annuitize is with an immediate or payout annuity purchased from an insurance company. In exchange for a lump-sum payment, you receive monthly income.

The "legacy costs" for retired auto workers are huge.  Thousands of dollars of a new automobile sticker price will really go to pay for  the cost of pension and health care for retired workers.   Here's a possible solution from Bloomberg.com.

General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler may create an independent health-insurance fund to trim their combined $114 billion in future retiree health-care obligations, five people with direct knowledge of the talks said.

The U.S. automakers would each contribute to the fund to pay for health-care benefits of United Auto Workers retirees, said the people, who didn't want to be identified because the discussions are private.

Joint health-care fund for Ford, GM and Chrysler.

The California Public Employees' Retirement System, the nation's largest public pension fund, has invested $140 million in such unrated CDO portions, according to data Calpers provided in response to a public records request. Citigroup Inc., the largest U.S. bank, sold the tranches to Calpers.

``I have trouble understanding public pension funds' delving into equity tranches, unless they know something the market doesn't know,'' says Edward Altman, director of the Fixed Income and Credit Markets program at New York University's Salomon Center for the Study of Financial Institutions.

Is your pension fund fund buying CDO's?  Check out the Bloomberg article.

Check out the new high for the Dow and S&P 500.

Courtesy StockCharts.com

AARP provides some sites you may want to visit.

Websites Specifically for Workers 50+

RetirementJobs.com
For job seekers 50 and over

Jobs 4.0
For job seekers 40 and over

Senior Job Bank
For job seekers 50 and over

Retired Brains
Older boomers, seniors, and retirees

Seniors4Hire
For job seekers 50 and over

YourEncore
Older scientists, engineers, and product developers

Dinosaur Exchange