Introduction

By U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Jonathan Steffen [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Hi!  I blog under the name "RAnn" and I'd like to welcome you to my new blog, Racing Towards Retirement.  Who am I?  I am a 53 year old woman who has been married to her first (and hopefully only) husband for twenty-five years.  My husband is 58.  We are the parents of three children.  My son is twenty-two and still lives with us.  Because of his autism, we do not expect him to move out or become self-supporting any time soon, but there is always hope.  He is currently working in food service at the Superdome.  My nineteen year old daughter is a sophomore at Northwestern State University of Louisiana.  My ten year old daughter (yes, I have a ten year old) is a student at our Catholic parish school.  My husband sells seafood to restaurants and I work as a paralegal.  Our lifestyle is comfortable but not extravagant.  Though most of our friends have the empty nest in view, our nest will be full until we retire.  

I have been a book blogger for many years and if you enjoy romances, Christian fiction, books about Catholicism or women's fiction I invite you to peruse This That and the Other Thing to help you find your next read.  I decided to start this blog when I started researching ways to invest my inheritance. I spent a lot of time researching investments when we were first married.  Our newly combined incomes gave us investable money for the first time and we wanted to make the most of it.  As our family and our expenses grew, and as our jobs provided 401(k) plans, the money available for investing outside those plans became rare and our lives got busier.  Investments were no longer an area on which my husband or I spent a lot of time.  Now, all of the sudden (I don't think it matters how long your parents are sick, they seem to die all of the sudden) I had this pile of money.  The death of my last parent (and my children's last grandparent) was a strong reminder that my husband and I were not as young as we used to be and that retirement was not as far away as it once was.  This blog is an attempt to document and share the things I've learned and the decisions we have made as we race the final laps toward what we hope will be a fulfilling retirement.  

I invite you to subscribe to this blog.  I am going to share information about investment options, describe our experiences with a financial planner, share links to interesting blog posts and review books on investments and retirement planning.  Come run with me!