Cuenca, Ecuador is a place of old world beauty and tops the list of 2009 World’s Top Retirement Havens listed by International Living. Cuenca is one of most beautiful and best-preserved colonial cities yet the price to live there is wallet-friendly: rent a beautiful condo for $300 a month or buy a large apartment for $43,000.

The 401K plans are a highly coveted benefit for American workers. But did you know that these plans were never designed to be the primary savings vehicle for retirement funds? They were originally formulated to give executives additional avenues of compensation. The average worker was added to go along for the ride.

When it comes to knowledge about long-term care insurance planning, Americans under age 60 received a failing grade.

With the recent economic downturn, there are a lot of people worried about their retirement nest egg. The stock market is volatile and portfolios have lost a great deal of their values over the past several years. The financial environment has left many wondering just how they can prepare for retirement in today’s world.

Several South American countries top the chart of best places for retirement and Ecuador leads them.

The Social Security Administrator Office has just launched an Online Retirement Calculator at At ssa.gov/estimator, which is an interactive estimator able to give you information about your future retirement benefits. A press release at www.ssa.gov informs that by visiting their link at www.socialsecurity.gov/estimator, you can easily receive information on retirement profits without the need to visit the agency's field offices.

Medical bankruptcies have increased 20 fold in the last 20 years. How will increasing health care costs effect your retirement?