Dear Quentin,

I am retiring next year, but I hope to wait until January 2027 before I draw Social Security at 69½. My husband will also retire in January 2027 when he turns 65. I estimate our combined Social Security income at $7,000 a month. Furthermore, I have built a 15-year TIPS ladder from my husband’s old retirement accounts and additional funds from an aftertax mutual fund; that should provide an additional $60,000 per year.

Currently, I have $1.9 million in my 401(k) and $200,000 in a 457(b) managed annuity account. My husband has about $100,000 (S&P 500) in his current workplace IRA. We have $500,000 in a money-market account and $220,000 (S&P 500

SPX) in a mutual fund. We own our home, which may sell for $400,000 when we retire.

It’s getting choppy. The heavy weighting afforded the megacap tech stocks meant the reception given to their third-quarter earnings was very likely to determine the stock market’s short-term direction.

And so, poorly-received reports from Meta

META and Microsoft MSFT saw the wider market retreat sharply on Thursday, while positivity over Amazon.com AMZN and Apple AAPL results are pushing indices back up on Friday.

Dear Quentin,

This is

my second time writing to you. It seems my previous plans to retire and move to the Philippines with my wife have been destroyed and I am now medically disabled/retired and can’t work. This throws my retirement plans off course, and I sure could use some help navigating my next financial moves. 

I am now 52, my wife is 57, and we still reside in Maryland. My father-in-law would now like to move back to the States and live full time, so we all would like to move somewhere warmer and are thinking it will be South Carolina or Texas. It will need to be near a VA hospital for my ongoing medical care and we are hoping to be near a beach.