A word of advice with only a couple months to go- whatever you need to do as far as your job is concerned, DO IT ASAP! If your home office is in another state like mine is, after retirement it's a PITA to get stuff done. Also, determine if your retirement health insurance is still affordable. I am under my wife's health plans already, so I already knew which way I was going, but that's something to consider unless you have no other options.
Investigate and completely understand ANY investment vehicle anyone offers you. Like an annuity. Be mindful that annuities aren't always the best option.
When you turn 62 or full retirement age and have to deal with SSI, at the moment you can be taxed on UP TO 85% of your SSI income. It just all depends on how it fits into the income formula. If you work while receiving SSI, you can only earn a certain amount before it starts costing you 1 dollar of SSI out of every 3 you earn above that limit. Keep in mind you're not losing that money, just deferring it because your SSI actually keeps going up the longer you have earned income. If you're already full retirement age for SSI, then there's no deductions or earnings limits.
One of the key elements entering into retirement I've found, is at first, do income preservation. We're doing a modified "3-bucket" system (look that up if you haven't heard of it- basically puts your money in 3 different buckets, as it were) where we actually have 2 401Ks and an IRA.
Using the IRA (bucket 1) to invest in mostly dividend stocks where the dividends will be paying us enough to live on and never touch the principle. Obviously this is the riskiest bucket (up 20+% for the year so far as of today) and still need to keep an eye on things. I have automated exit strategies, but if it hits those, it'll still hurt. But so far, it's pouring more stock every month back into the kitty from reinvested dividends. Got to wait until next year when I'm 59.5 to start taking the dividends from that without paying a 10% early withdrawal penalty. Reinvesting the dividends until then will just pump that up even further.
I've got enough saved in the bank plus our pensions to get us through next year as far as cash needs like we never even retired. Even got an emergency fund. A long downturn or big string of bad luck could screw it up though.
My other 401K (bucket 2) is moderately invested, and continues to grow (now about 7% up for the year), and the wife's 401K (bucket 3) is invested mainly in risk averse bonds mostly with after tax funds. It's only doing 3-3.5% average return right now, but the thing is, we probably won't need to even look at it for another 10-15 years. Slow but constant growth piles up after a while.
We'll hold off for as long as we can on SSI (if it's still there), because we know we're going to be getting taxed on 85% of that right off the bat.
Additionally, I never thought I'd be clipping coupons, but if you're a cheap bastage like me, you learn that they can be your friend.
The key to everything retirement is that no matter how much income you have, if you have money left over every month after paying the bills, you're winning.
We're not billionaires (yet) but suffice it to say, if we got any closer to Easy Street, we'd have to change our zip code.
