We put together this list of resources to help you improve your financial decision-making, while planning for life events, and at the same time being true to your life goals.
From getting your finances in order to launching your own business, there are a wide range of topics. We can’t vouch for every single site since we haven’t used them all ourselves. Many (but not all) are affiliate sites, meaning if you click on the link and purchase a good or service, we receive a referral fee.
If you purchase anything through one of the links below and are not satisfied, please let us know so we may reconsider including it in our list. And if you know of a good product or service you think might be a good fit for the Boomerbaggage community, let us know.
Financial Planning & Investments
How to Budget, Save, Spend and Invest: Do you dream of being financially secure? Of having more money for your family and your future? Are you making the right decisions to help those dreams come true? Whether you are a member of Generation X, Generation Y or a Baby Boomer, How to Budget, Save, Spend and Invest will help improve your financial decision-making.
WiserAdvisor: The goal of this site is to connect people to the right financial advisors. This service helps you locate appropriate candidates, understand their credentials, check references, and conduct interviews to help you ask the right questions.
NewRetirement: This site matches you with a financial advisor who meets your specific needs. After you complete an automated, online retirement planning calculator, you’ll have a telephone or face-to-face consultation with someone who knows your area and can provide relevant advice.
WealthTrace Retirement Planner (MAC or PC): This software allows you to calculate how much you need to retire with, calculate the probability of funds running out using Monte Carlo analysis and helps you determine ways to change your retirement situation.
Retirement View 2013: This retirement planning software comes either for individual or couples planning and is available for both MACs and PCs. With this software, you can visually see whether you are running out of money; redraws your retirement picture when you change input and includes investments, Social Security, pensions, expenses, inflation, taxes and more.
Values Based Financial Planning: The Art of Creating and Inspiring Financial Strategy: This book by Bill Bachrach will help you build a financial strategy, starting with your own unique values and what’s truly important to you.
How to Tell Whether Your Adviser is Working in Your Best Interest: A Fiduciary Guide for Individual Consumers: This fact sheet from the Department of Labor highlights certain items that should be considered when you hire an advisor.
Retirement Calculator: This site offers a variety of retirement planning and savings calculators.
Assisted Living Benefits for Veterans: A resource that aims to help the disabled and elderly maximize their healthy years and age gracefully. The resource includes a hub, where communities can connect with the most useful elderly care guides, tools and other resources which can impact their lives.
Insurance
Ultimate Guide to Term Life Insurance: This e-book reviews what term life insurance is and how it works.
Long-Term Care: How to Plan and Pay for It: This book by Joseph Matthews helps you understand the alternatives to nursing facilities and shows you how to find the best care you can afford.
Social Security & Medicare
The Social Security Retirement Guide: This book by Jim Blair provides advice on how to maximize your Social Security benefit.
The Official Website of the U.S. Social Security Administration: This site provides information on retirement, disability, survivors, Medicare and much more.
The Official U.S. Government Site for Medicare: This site provides information on Medicare costs and coverage, drug coverage, claims and appeals and much more.
Wills & Estates
The Wall Street Journal Complete Estate Planning Guide: The book is structured around the main estate-planning tools you’ll likely encounter: wills, trusts, life insurance, guardianship papers, advance medical directives and power-of-attorney documents.
Estate Planning Organizer: This tool is organized into several comprehensive step-by-step sections that get you thinking seriously and actively about the things you need to know — and tell your children and your lawyer — to complete your estate.
LastTestamentWill.com: Online last will and testament forms and other estate planning documents including living wills, revocable living trusts and trust agreements.
Nolo: Products include a large selection of legal forms online including power of attorney, wills, living trust, leases, promissory notes and estate planning software Quicken WillMaker Plus.
Continuing Education
Teliken Computers for Seniors: This touchscreen computer combines video chat, photo sharing, email and other features in one device. The software is fully installed and it’s ready to go out of the box.
Become a Twitter Power User: This course will help you use this networking tool strategically to influence the right people and meet your goals.
Facebook for Dummies: This book covers the latest Facebook updates and guides new users into the Facebook experience quickly and easily. It looks at the redesigned home and profile pages, new security filters, new photo options, expanded mobile connection options and updates to popular Facebook apps.
Noble Desktop: Based in NYC, this organization offers online classes on the cutting edge of what’s hot in online media. If it’s not being used, they don’t teach it. Take advantage of their free online seminars to get an idea of what’s out there.
Skillshare: If you want to learn things a little outside the norm, this is where to do it. Skillshare has a project-oriented teaching style that includes video lessons, step-by-step project guides and peer feedback sessions.
Dabbler: An ambitious project from NYC-based Brooklyn Brainery, Dabbler is a subscription-based newsletter that promises one new hobby every month. For $2 a month, Dabbler will email you everything you need to learn a wide range of subjects, from HTML to winemaking and all things in between.
Work-Life Balance: A Guide to Surviving the Stress: This publication provides tips on how to manage stress resulting from one’s attempt to balance work and life.
Self-Employment
BoomerPreneurs: How Baby Boomers Can Start Their Own Business, Make Money and Enjoy Life: This book by Beth Izard follows a 4-step process to identify a business that meets your needs and those of the marketplace.
Turn Your Side Hustle into a Full Time Business: This guide details how the writer earned $2,000 a month as a freelancer.
Legal Zoom: This site enables small businesses and consumers to create their own legal documents. The tools on the site help users create last wills, incorporate businesses, trademark names and take care of other common legal matters.
Go Daddy: This site offers everything you need to make a name for yourself on the Web, from buying domain names and website builders to completing eCommerce solutions.
bluehost: From the business owner to the individual who desires full functionality on a small budget, bluehost provides your complete web hosting solution.
Measure Your Entrepreneurial Instinct by Mary Frakes and Thomas Harrison
Entrepreneur Personality Test by Garret LaPorto
Giving Back
Travel
The Complete Workout Travel Kit: This portable workout system provides all the equipment you need to give your body a complete workout. Includes a bar, five resistance cords, door anchor, two ankle straps, two handles, instruction guide and a bag that fits into a carry on.
1,000 Places to See Before You Die: This #1 New York Times bestseller by Patricia Schultz belongs on every bookshelf. Newsweek said it “tells you what’s beautiful, what’s fun, and what’s just unforgettable-everywhere on earth.”
Path of Beauty: Photographic Adventures in the Grand Canyon: This is a great coffee table book by Christopher Brown for those who have been or are thinking about visiting the Grand Canyon.
Briggs & Riley Transcend Wheeled Upright: This is a good investment for retirees who want reliable luggage and plan to do a lot of traveling.
Kindle Paperwhite: Travel with all the reading material — books, magazines and more — at your fingertips. This easy-to-use e-reader is much lighter than the average paperback, plus you can increase the font size so it’s easier to read. Saves room in the suitcase and great for reading on the plane.
Eagle Creek Undercover Money Belt: For keeping money and credit cards safe while exploring. Even in friendly areas, tourist cities are likely to have people eager to take advantage of unsuspecting travelers.
Health and Fitness
Substance Abuse Rehab for Veterans: If you are a veteran who struggles with substance abuse, you can receive a variety of services for free from the VA including help detoxing, treatment in facilities, individual or group therapy, medications, and other services. This guide contains information to walk you through each step of the process – from learning about substance abuse treatment programs to accessing treatment. The guide also includes additional resources, hotlines, and funding programs to supplement or help make treatment possible.
Senior Strength Training Program: This collection of three videos caters to anyone from beginners to advanced exercisers. Instructions are easy to follow with clear explanations.
Stronger Seniors: This chair exercise program by Anne Pringle Burnell includes two DVDs and focuses on stretching, aerobics, strength training and balance. It aims to improve flexibility, muscle and bone strength, circulation, heart health and stability.
Ideal Resting Heart Rate for Your Health: This article makes clear there is really no “ideal” resting heart rate for everyone. The article describes what a resting heart rate is and how to measure and interpret the results.
Flex™ Wireless Activity & Sleep Wristband: This slim, stylish device is with you all the time. During the day, it tracks steps, distance and calories burned. At night, it tracks your sleep quality and wakes you silently in the morning. Just check out the lights to see how you stack up against your personal goal. It’s the motivation you need to get out and be more active.
Grandparenting
Visitation and Custody for Grandparents: Explains how a relative can file for visitation or custody, offers tips on how to discuss with the parents, and additional options that may be available to families.
Talking to Toddlers: This course helps parents and grandparents deal with the terrible twos and beyond.
Autism and the Grandparents Connection: Filled with practical information, this book by Jennifer Krumins will give you tools you need to provide stability, support and strength to your grandchild with autism.
Foundation for Grandparenting: This non-profit organization’s mission is to raise grandparent consciousness and promote the importance of grandparenting as a role and function that both gives important meaning and empowerment to later life and benefits all family members.
The Grandparent Guide: The Definitive Guide to Coping with the Challenges of Modern Grandparenting: From interracial families to adopted children, same-sex parents to surrogacy, this comprehensive guide by Arthur Kornhaber covers the new challenges and new joys of being a grandparent today.
The Baby Boomers’ Guide to Grandparenting: This book by Diana J. Ewingtakes a humorous look at where boomers have been and where they’re going as grandparents in an over-the-top combination of boomer history, pop culture then and now, the foibles of aging and the ups and downs of life in grandparentland.
1-2-3 Magic: Effective Discipline for Children 2-12: This book by Thomas W. Phelan addresses the difficult task of child discipline with humor, keen insight and proven experience. The technique offers a method of disciplining children ages two through 12 without arguing, yelling or spanking.