The IRS has a mandatory withholding of 20% each time you take money from your employer plan.

 Your IRA does not have a mandatory withholding of 20%... It's still taxable but the IRA does give you the flexiblility to have a different tax withheld.  You could do 10, 15 or even zero percent.  Talk with your tax advisor...the IRA will let you indicate the tax withholding.

 If you're over 70 1/2 your MRD is treated different-you can elect not to have any taxes withheld.  Of course the MRD is still taxable...

Some advice from Suzanne:  

Find a Retirement Community That Matches Your Energy Level, Not Your Age

 You have to ask yourself this question: Are you choosing a retirement destination because you want to be around people your age? If so, that isn't the question to ask. What you want is to be around people with your same energy level. Not all 65-year-olds are created equal. Some are on oxygen, some in wheelchairs, some have heart disease and diabetes, they are overweight and lethargic. Some have poor diets, some are on so many pills they can't think.

The retirement ideal has undergone more facelifts than an aging baby boomer. Not so long ago, your grandfather worked to 65, collected a gold watch, and split for Florida with a fat pension and health benefits. Millions of people followed the same path.

Yet that model has been decaying for years, driven by the new realities of human longevity, the deep-seated desire of millions of retiring boomers to make a difference, and, more recently, financial pressures that surfaced during and after the Great Recession.  Emerging now is a highly personalized vision of later life—a vision dictated by your passions, health, desire to remain engaged, and of course the ability to pay for it all.

So the new vision of retirement must account for our ability to pay. For most, that means working longer. After all, the average worker between 55 and 64 has saved only $65,000, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute. Still, there are some common threads to the ideal retirement:

• Financial freedom This is a big one, and it has been redefined. Financial freedom is no longer about having enough money in the bank to quit work for good and do whatever you like; it’s about having enough income and free time to do the things that matter most to you. It’s less about material things and more about personal experiences. You may need to work longer to achieve financial freedom. But if you step back from your grinding career and do something you love, on your terms, you may get the income and flexibility you need to travel, spend time with family, or pursue a passion like painting or writing. A key element of financial freedom is guaranteed monthly income through an annuity, traditional pension, or passive income like stock dividends, interest from bonds, or rent from investment properties.

Time Magazine:  Redefining The "Ideal" Retirement

Your 401k portfolio or IRA retirement accounts probably had a set back last week.

Interest rates have been rising the last several months and if you're sitting in bond funds you've seen your portfolio go down.  Stock funds have done extremely well this year but last week saw large declines.  Log into your retirement accounts and look at your "asset allocation"..the ratio of stocks, bonds, and cash you own. Many plans show your allocation as a pie chart.   If you're pie chart is all bonds, very conservative- you're feeling the interest rate risk.  If you've overweighted to stocks-market risk.  This ratio is important!

Most financial planners suggest 20-30 percent stock for retiree's, 50-60 for balanced investors and 70 percent for growth investors.  If you're above 80 percent in stocks-your portfolio will fluctuate much more..many planners limit higher larger exposure to stocks..just too volatile!

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 344 points for the week, or 2.23%, including a 225-point drop on Thursday, while the broader S&P 500 index fell 2.1%. The market slump broke the momentum of a positive run that had taken share prices to a record earlier this month.

WSJ Highlighted Five Ways You Can Mess Up Your Retirement.

Great tips, here's number #4:

4 Not making a nonfinancial plan

Laura Scharr-Bykowsky, a financial adviser in Columbia, S.C., says she is seeing a disturbing trend among new retirees: emotional troubles, including in some cases depression, marriage breakdowns, and a few too many—sometimes way too many—gin-and-tonics.

"They go from go-go-go to 'what am I going to do after I eat breakfast?' " she says. "They underestimate the emotional toll it will take."

In many cases, she says, they have no plan for what they plan to do when they retire. They have simply quit work, sometimes early, because they hate their jobs and can't handle the stress any more. They have "baby-boomer burnout."

She advises "test driving" more leisure time before you quit by taking more long weekends, by developing routines around hobbies, and by building new social networks—such as golfing buddies and church groups—before you retire.

Detroit, you're not alone. 

Across the nation, cities and states are watching Detroit's largest-ever municipal bankruptcy filing with great trepidation. Years of underfunded retirement promises to public sector workers, which helped lay Detroit low, could plunge them into a similar and terrifying financial hole.

Nine states—Hawaii, Alaska, Kansas, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Louisiana, Connecticut, Kentucky and Illinois—have now set aside less than 60 percent of what they need. Illinois has saved just 43 cents to cover every dollar of what it needs to pay 350,000 retirees and 500,000 current plan participants who are counting on a pension check.

Without a pension check, public sector workers face a bleak retirement. Many are ineligible for Social Security.

Check out this state map of pension funding level at CNBC.com.

Here's a few to consider:

Bigger Social Security checks. You get bigger Social Security benefits if you delay claiming your payments between ages 62 and 70. For example, a baby boomer who could get $750 per month at age 62 would get $1,000 per month at age 66 and $1,320 monthly at age 70. After age 70, there is no additional benefit to delaying your payments. Social Security benefits are calculated based on your 35 highest-earning years in the workforce. So, if you earn more than you did earlier in your career, you could further boost your payments.

Your health. Continuing to work could have a positive impact on your health. A recent study of about 429,000 self-employed workers in France by the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research, found people who retire later have a lower risk of developing dementia. "For each extra year of work before retirement, it lowers the risk of getting dementia by 3.2 percent," says Carole Dufouil, a director of research at the institute. "This is in line with the 'use it or lose it' hypothesis, which says that as long as you use your brain, it is efficient."

We'll be hearing a lot about Detroits bankruptcy and pension problems for all their retiree's.

The Detroit Free Press has a long, detailed breakdown of Detroit’s pension woes. Here’s the key chart:

Fidelity is one of the largest providers of 401k plans. They administer over 20,000 retirement plans including 401k, 403b and small business plans.  In these plans... 1 in 9 participants took a new loan in the past year. The average loan amount was $9,000.

The annual Nathan's hot-dog eating contest was a cake walk for six-time defending champing Joey Chestnut who downed 69 frankfurters and buns in 10 minutes for his seventh consecutive victory.

The San Jose, Calif., man known as Jaws ate one more wiener than his previous record to capture the mustard-yellow champion's belt. He said afterward that he was motivated by the prestige, not the $10,000 prize money.

"I'd do this for nothing," he said.