It is not always easy to talk about financial matters with friends and family. Online retirement forums and early retirement forums are great options for discussing money and getting answers to financial planning questions.
Online forums can be amazing places to get information. They can also be confusing as you will likely get a wide range of opinions. You might feel more confused than empowered after asking your question.
So, how to avoid the confusion? Many people like to try out advice they get in a retirement forum by using a retirement or financial planning tool.
The Boldin Retirement Planner is perhaps the most comprehensive option available — able to handle a wide variety of scenarios on many different subjects: planning, withdrawals, savings, inflation, taxes, roth conversions, medical expenses, real estate investing, pensions, downsizing, volunteering, retirement jobs, budgeting, debt and much more.
Ask your question in a forum, then try out different answers as part of your overall financial plan!
The Boldin Facebook group is a friendly and supportive place for people to discuss ways to be wealthier and more secure and feel more certain about financial decision-making. All questions related to planning, income generation, financial independence, investing, lifestyle, and how to age well are welcome. Get answers from smart, friendly, compassionate, people who are probably working through issues similar to your own.
Popular recent topics have included: Roth conversions, taxes, withdrawal order, biggest financial regret and more.
People who ask questions usually get 5-100 responses within a few days. Conversations are lightly moderated and rules for discussions include:
- Be kind, helpful, and respectful
- There is to be NO self promotion, soliciting, personal research or referrals (including DM requests) for your projects, company or brand
- Refrain from politics and religion
The Bogleheads forum features, “investing advice inspired by Jack Bogle.”
It is a vibrant and very active forum covering personal investments, investing (theory, news and general), personal finance (not investing) and more.
In the personal finance category, examples of acceptable topics are: insurance, employment issues, credit card and credit rating issues, mortgage and loan issues, and legal issues that have a financial component.
The number of replies per question varies widely with some questions getting 600 plus responses and others just getting one or two.
The forum rules on Bogleheads are extensive and can be reviewed here.
The AARP forum is a space for the discussion of issues important to you and the challenges facing Americans 50 and older. They say, “AARP’s Online Community has long provided a safe, vibrant, open forum in which participants can discuss a wide range of topics, from the serious to the delightfully trivial.”
Popular topics on AARP including housing options. The question, “Where do you want to live when you retire?” got 418 responses, but most questions only have 1-10 replies.
Rules for discussion include:
- Share what you know
- Be a good citizen
- Cite your sources
While not quite as active as their early retirement forum, with around 14,000 members, you will get answers on Reddit’s Personal Finance forum.
Learn about budgeting, saving, getting out of debt, credit, investing, and retirement planning.
The Choose FI Facebook group is an active community serving the audience of the ChooseFI radio Podcast and the great FI community.
FI stands for Financial Independence. Financial independence is a concept that generally refers to a financial state where you don’t need to work for money to fund life. Many adherents of financial independence are aiming for an early — very early — retirement.
The Choose FI early retirement forum has more than 78,000 members and is very active.
Participation guidelines include:
- Keep it friendly and respectful
- No self promotion outside of moderator initiated posts
- No contentious debates
- And more…
With 879,000 members, the Reddit financial independence / early retirement forum is incredibly active.
Their about section says, “This is a place for people who are or want to become Financially Independent (FI), which means not having to work for money. Financial Independence is closely related to the concept of Early Retirement/Retiring Early (RE) – quitting your job/career and pursuing other activities with your time. At its core, FI/RE is about maximizing your savings rate (through less spending and/or higher income) to achieve FI and have the freedom to RE as fast as possible.”
Their extensive community rules are here.
