WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Usually, when people talk about someone “going through a stage” they are talking about a 2-year-old or a teen. But there’s another age at which people go through a key transitional period, also marked by angst and rebellion: Call it pre-retirement.

It sets in by the time workers hit their late 50s, even though they are told they should work for another decade or so to maximize their retirement security. But it hits for real about five years before an expected retirement date. It’s the period that Prudential Financial Inc calls “the red zone” and another insurance company, Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America, calls “the transitional phase.”

Both of those companies talk about that pre-retirement period in the context of selling annuities — insurance products that offer tax benefits and lifetime income in exchange for large sums of money. But buying insurance or some other financial product is the easy part of retirement planning; the hard work should happen first.

Here are some guidelines for getting through that phase with a minimum of stress and strain.

– Get specific about life planning. This can be the most challenging part of the exercise; the rest is just numbers. What are the activities you really care about? Where do you want to travel and need to travel? What kind of lifestyle do you think you will have? There are ways to get help with this. The University of North Carolina at Asheville runs “Creative Retirement Exploration” weekends (here). A variety of books and websites claim to be able to help with lifestyle planning. Mutual fund company T. Rowe Price has a new interactive online exercise called “Ready 2 Retire” (here) that walks older workers through some of these questions.

– Become a Social Security savant. The program is complicated, but will make a significant contribution to almost everyone who retires in the United States. There are a series of strategies you can use to maximize your benefits, especially if you are married. Couples can tag-team their benefits, claim them and suspend them, defer them and more.

It makes sense to get a good numbers person, an actuary or an accountant, who understands all of this, to help you figure out which strategy is best for you. At least one company, Social Security Solutions (www.socialsecuritysolutions) claims to have all of that down to a science. For a fee, it will come up with a comprehensive benefits plan for you.

WASHINGTON, April 11 (Reuters) – By various accounts, Apple Inc. is now bigger than Spain, Portugal and Greece (combined), or the entire retail sector of the U.S. economy, or 13 Warren Buffetts. What are we to think about that?

First, a disclosure. In my two-person household are three Apple laptops, two Apple desktops, two iPhones, one iPod, two healthy iTunes accounts, a fair amount of iPad lust, and 200 shares of Apple stock, purchased by my husband roughly two decades ago, and making up a large share of his retirement account.

He would have had 400 shares, but – as he frequently reminds me – I talked him into selling 100 shares (pre-split) back when it was selling for an eye-popping $65 a share, a price I thought was frighteningly high. It is selling today for about $628 a share.

So, (1) No sane person would take buy or sell advice from me; and (2) I have a vested interest in everyone plowing more and more into this company until it’s worth more than every other company put together, or I can convince my husband to sell more. However, that isn’t the point of this column.

Rather, it’s to offer some perspective on this gorilla of Wall Street and the people who own it. And to warn individual investors that, even if they don’t live in an iCult ashram like mine, they may own Apple stock.

That’s because the most commonly held mutual funds have been plowing cash into Apple, and when a company gets that big, it can dominate even a diversified mutual fund portfolio.

And so, a few points to consider.

WASHINGTON, April 4 (Reuters) – The generation that invented “helicopter parenting” is moving into its grandparenting years with a wad of cash and strong ideas about how their precious posterity should live, so get ready for Granny and Grandpa Baby Boomer to shake things up.

Already, today’s first-time grandparents are the youngest ever, with an average age of 47, according to an AARP survey. Boomers have the highest median household income of any age group, according to the U.S. Census; by some accounts they control as much as 70 percent of American net worth and stand to inherit another $8 trillion or more.

What could be more American boomer-esque than spending that money on the grandchildren, indulging them and exerting influence along the way? Roughly 36 percent of the grandparents surveyed by AARP said “spoiling (grand)children by buying them too much” was a part of a grandparent’s financial role.

And it’s fun. Ask George Marotta, who is not a baby boomer. The 85-year-old Palo Alto patriarch has turned helping his 10 grandchildren into a hobby that has paid off for multiple generations. He and his wife started in the mid-1980s, and over the years have plowed cash into bank accounts, 529 plans and Roth IRAs for all of the grandchildren.

Their total investment of just under $700,000 into 529 college savings plans has already put five grandchildren through college; four more are now in college and one is still in high school. And there’s $708,335 left to fund medical school for one, divinity school for another, and graduate school and continuing education for all.

“We had more than we needed for ourselves, and so we thought we would help the grandchildren,” Marotta said, noting that he and his wife became financial planners in Palo Alto in the mid-1980s, just around the time the dot-com boom was taking off. Widowed 10 years ago, Marotta has since remarried and is now a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institute.

“I recently sent an email to my 10 grandchildren, saying ‘Don’t worry about your career; do something you really would like to do. Experiment if you want,” said Marotta. “We’ve got you covered.”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Over the next week, most colleges will give high school seniors the good news — who got in where — and the bad news — how much it will cost.

Then it will be crunch time for a full month, as parents try to make the numbers work so their kids can give colleges their final answers by May 1.

Parents will check bank balances and sofa cushions for the cash to make it happen. Financial aid officers will steel themselves for the calls they know are coming, as parents appeal for bigger and better awards. “This is the month of negotiating,” says Bob Ilukowicz, a financial aid consultant in Smithtown, New York.

There certainly is aid out there. Ilukowicz says he is seeing his clients get fatter offers for the 2012-2013 school year than he saw in recent years. The College Board estimates that the average private nonprofit four-year college charges $38,590 for tuition, fees, room and board in the 2011-2012 school year, but that grants and federal tax breaks (which it now counts as “aid”) shave about $15,530 off that.

Almost 80 percent of full-time undergraduates get some kind of aid, according to the U.S. Department of Education, and roughly 64 percent get the good kind — grants that don’t have to be paid back.

But burdensome student loans still make up about half of all financial aid, and with tuition alone over $40,000 at more than 100 pricey schools(“obscene,” says Ilukowicz), how much aid is ever enough? And how can you get it? Here are a few strategies for “haggle month,” and beyond.

– Ask for more. Roughly two-thirds of parents who appeal their Amherst College aid awards get more money, admits Joe Paul Case, the school’s financial aid administrator. And Amherst is a school that doesn’t offer merit aid or meet competitive offers just to win over a student; Case runs a strictly needs-based aid office. At schools that have discretionary funds to offer merit aid and meet competition, the rewards for asking for an upgraded offer are even better.

WASHINGTON, March 28 (Reuters) – Over the next week, most colleges will give high school seniors the good news — who got in where — and the bad news — how much it will cost.

Then it will be crunch time for a full month, as parents try to make the numbers work so their kids can give colleges their final answers by May 1.

Parents will check bank balances and sofa cushions for the cash to make it happen. Financial aid officers will steel themselves for the calls they know are coming, as parents appeal for bigger and better awards. “This is the month of negotiating,” says Bob Ilukowicz, a financial aid consultant in Smithtown, New York.

There certainly is aid out there. Ilukowicz says he is seeing his clients get fatter offers for the 2012-2013 school year than he saw in recent years. The College Board estimates that the average private nonprofit four-year college charges $38,590 for tuition, fees, room and board in the 2011-2012 school year, but that grants and federal tax breaks (which it now counts as “aid”) shave about $15,530 off that.

Almost 80 percent of full-time undergraduates get some kind of aid, according to the U.S. Department of Education, and roughly 64 percent get the good kind — grants that don’t have to be paid back.

But burdensome student loans still make up about half of all financial aid, and with tuition alone over $40,000 at more than 100 pricey schools(“obscene,” says Ilukowicz), how much aid is ever enough? And how can you get it? Here are a few strategies for “haggle month,” and beyond.

– Ask for more. Roughly two-thirds of parents who appeal their Amherst College aid awards get more money, admits Joe Paul Case, the school’s financial aid administrator. And Amherst is a school that doesn’t offer merit aid or meet competitive offers just to win over a student; Case runs a strictly needs-based aid office. At schools that have discretionary funds to offer merit aid and meet competition, the rewards for asking for an upgraded offer are even better.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Treasury will unveil a new savings bonds website on Tuesday in an attempt to win consumers over to traditional government-issued, small-denomination bonds, despite their low interest rates.

Currently, Series EE bonds are paying a fixed rate of 0.60 percent. I bonds — which have variable rates including an inflation component that tracks the Consumer Price Index — are currently paying 3.06 percent interest, but that rate changes every six months and will next be adjusted on May 1, 2012.

Both types of savings bonds must be held for a year, and holders give up some interest if they trade in their bonds before five years pass.

“We think they are good products … and the interest rates are competitive,” Bureau of the Public Debt Commissioner Van Zeck told Reuters.

The new promotional website, tagged “Ready.Save.Grow” (here), is aimed at helping small savers and investors learn how to use Treasury Direct (www.treasurydirect.gov), the shopping portal through which individuals can buy Treasury bonds, notes and bills online. The Treasury stopped issuing paper savings bonds on January 1, but Zeck pointed out that people who want to buy bonds as gifts can print out a paper gift receipt to slip into a greeting card.

The Treasury sold $1.7 billion in savings bonds in fiscal year 2011, and about 87 percent of them were old-fashioned paper bonds, according to the figures from the department. Investors who want to buy what’s called “marketable” Treasury securities — more sophisticated bills, notes, bonds and Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS) — can also use the site to get user-friendly directions on how to buy these products.

To promote savings bonds to consumers, the Treasury has partnered with several private groups, including: AARP; the Consumer Federation; the American Savings Education Council, a public/private pro-savings group; and the Center for Financial Services Innovation, a largely bank-funded nonprofit that aims to address financial services needs of low-income “unbanked” consumers.

WASHINGTON, March 21 (Reuters) – Reverse mortgages used to be the last recourse of the little old lady: A way for her to get money for household help and stay in her home until she died.

But now, baby boomers are sniffing around these backwards loans, looking for a way to pay off other debts and provide bridge funding for the early years of retirement. In a reverse mortgage, a lender pays money to a homeowner, but the homeowner has no monthly payments. The loan, plus interest, is repaid when the home is sold.

Almost half of the people now considering a reverse mortgage are under the age of 70, and 21 percent are ages 62 to 64, according to a new study by the MetLife Mature Market Institute and the National Council on Aging. The average age of borrowers is 73; in 1990 it was 76, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

MetLife hypothesizes that the increased demand from younger borrowers is a result of the punishing economy: Reverse mortgages don’t require borrowers to have income or healthy credit scores because they don’t make payments. But there’s something else in play, too. As the Federal Housing Authority has issued more consumer-friendly standards and lower cost options for reverse mortgages, they are having some appeal to a broader demographic.

Americans 62 and older (that’s the minimum age for qualifying for a reverse mortgage) have $3.19 trillion in home equity, according to the National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association.

Surely among them are some young retirees who may want to stay in their homes for a few years, but not forever. By using a reverse mortgage for those few years, they can wipe out their existing regular mortgage, make home repairs, defer starting their Social Security benefits and more. Those are the kinds of strategies that experts see coming to the fore.

“In the future it is likely that tapping home equity will be viewed as part of the entire retirement planning process,” said Barbara Stucki, vice president for home equity initiatives for NCOA. “It is likely the reverse mortgage option will be considered alongside some of the more traditional methods of saving and investment.”

WASHINGTON, March 14 (Reuters) – When the consumer price index is released later this week, it’s likely to look scary because of the run up in gasoline prices that hit at the end of February.

Economists polled by Reuters expect the CPI to be up 0.4 percent in February, double the January rate, mainly on oil price increases that were 11 percent in February. In both January and February, the index would have gone up half as much if food and energy prices were excluded.

Economists in and out of the Labor Department, which publishes the CPI, will try to say that “core inflation” doesn’t include those everyday expenses. But not much is more core to the consumer experience than eating, staying warm, and getting to work.

Now, some economists are taking issue with the way the Labor Department measures prices. That could have huge implications for family budgets, especially for budgets (like those reliant on Social Security benefits) that are dependant on CPI-pegged adjustments.

A group called the American Institute for Economic Research has started publishing a new index it calls the “everyday price index” that measures day-to-day costs of consumer life. In 2011, it says, day-to-day costs for most Americans rose about 8 percent for the year, while the official CPI logged a 3.1 percent increase for the year.

Of course, it’s not really statistically valid to ignore the cost of housing, cars, furniture and other items that people buy all the time, just not every day. But the “everyday price index” shows that there’s more than one way to measure inflation.

Another measure, developed within the Labor Department and called the CPI-E, measures inflation as it affects senior consumers. It has a higher weighting for healthcare costs and has grown faster than the regular CPI for most of the last decade.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Workers are saving less, worrying more and may be unrealistic about their ability to work as long as they think necessary to afford retirement, according to a major national survey released on Tuesday.

The 2012 Retirement Confidence Survey, published by Employee Benefits Research Institute, found workers in January as gloomy as they have ever been about their retirement prospects. The survey, which measures workers’ and retirees’ views of the future rather than actual savings data, has been conducted annually for 22 years and is largely underwritten by financial services firms.

Some 60 percent of workers surveyed said they had less than $25,000 in household savings (excluding their homes and traditional pensions); 34 percent said they had pulled money out of savings to pay for basic expenses; and only 52 percent said they felt even somewhat confident that they would have enough money to live comfortably through their retirement years.

The nation’s confidence has plateaued “at the lowest levels we’ve seen in the two decades since we’ve done this survey,” said Jack VanDerhei, the report’s co-author and research director at EBRI.

VanDerhei said it was not clear how much the pessimism was warranted, since the survey did not track actual retirement readiness or spending. Some workers could be in better shape than they may think they are.

For example, workers who had calculated their retirement needs had significantly higher confidence levels than those who had not done the math, said Greg Burrows, senior vice president of the Principal Financial Group, a long-time underwriter of the Retirement Confidence Survey.

But “a significant percent of the population is deluding themselves,” VanDerhei said. “If you’re in your 50s and you don’t have any money saved and you don’t have a… (defined benefit)… plan, I have no problem saying that is delusional.”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Three years after a market rout sent investors scurrying in every direction but Wall Street, some financial advisers are tentatively starting to put their clients back into stocks, according to recent reports.

“Gun-shy advisers tiptoe back into equities,” read one of these stories, here at Reuters (link.reuters.com/nag96s).

The gist of it was that investors, who had been afraid to invest in stocks since the market tanked in 2008, were coming back now that shares were rising briskly. And their advisers were accommodating them.

That seems like particularly bad timing on the part of the experts. Since the market bottomed three years ago this week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has gone up roughly 100 percent. And now they’re tiptoeing back.

It used to be that one of the main benefits offered by advisers was their calming presence when clients were panicking, according to Louis Harvey, president of Dalbar, a research firm that monitors investment behavior. He said that clients got better about not panicking and so advisers aren’t so needed now for their hand holding and countervailing advices.

But during the last three years, terrified investors have been bringing their apocalyptic visions to advisers. And, instead of quoting Baron “Buy when blood is running in the streets” Rothschild or even hanging tough, too many advisers just gave clients what they said they wanted. They have been moving clients into bonds, selling them guaranteed annuities, and doing other things to make sure those doors are locked tight, well after that horse has bolted.

“The dash to Treasuries since 2008, and the move out of stocks after stocks were just hacked to pieces was an amazing mistake,” says David Dremen, a well-known contrarian investment manager and author of “Contrarian Investment Strategies: The Psychological Edge.”