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For all the years of great sacrifice that serving in the military requires, the benefits and pay aren't that great. A pension though is one source of dignity and comfort that veterans can count on. To anyone who serves in the military for 20 years or more, military retirement pay, pension is a given. Payments begin as soon as one retires.

But of course, not every veteran can count of the same kinds of military retirement pay or benefits. There are three kinds of retirement program, and everything depends on the kind one is eligible for.

If you joined the military any time before the 80s began, you get the Final Pay military retirement pay program today. You're on the High 36 program if you joined the military after the 80s began. There's also something called a Redux plan that allows anyone who has served for at least 15 years to opt for a $30,000 bonus as soon as they retire if they can live with smaller lifetime payments.

Your first day at any regular job, you are going to get handed an information packet about your health benefits and your retirement benefits. When you read up about your retirement benefits, you are going to come across a choice between investing in a 401(k) and a 403b. Everyone's heard of the 401(k). What on earth is a 403b though? When you compare 401k vs 403b, how do you know which one wins out?

A 403b plan is not that different from the 401(k) that you are familiar with. It is a tax-deferred retirement plan. It allows you to contribute pretax dollars out of your salary every month so that you can save for your retirement. Basically, you're allowed to contribute up to $16,500 a year. Your employer will have appointed a financial management company to administer and manage the company's 403b employee retirement plans, and you can choose what mutual funds or other investments your money is to be invested in.

The basic difference is that not every kind of employer out there will offer you a 403b plan. Nonprofit groups, schools and governmental organizations – these are the employers that are able to offer you this option. Basically, the 403b is for the government and for very small employers. To help these people out, the law makes sure that the administrative costs of 403b plans are far lower than they are for 401(k) plans. In the 401k vs 403b head-to-head, the latter wins out in this respect.

There are lots of people today who are counting the days until … they turn old and poor. It's not much of a fate to look forward to, of course. But to lots of boomers over the age of 50 (one out of four of them, actually), that's exactly the kind of future that they are able to look forward to. They have no savings and have no retirement account. These are people for whom Social Security benefits are the only way to survive. The value of the average Social Security check that people get is about $1100 a month. That's about $20 a month over the official US poverty level. Usually, any retirement guide you look at essentially busies itself in telling you how to save for your retirement, how to invest it and so on. What do you do when you're so close to retirement that saving isn't an option anymore? What do you do when it's too late?

This retirement guide it is about what you do when you don't have any money, you're too old or ill to keep working, and you basically have nowhere to go. For people in these unhappy straits there are numerous government programs that step in and pull up the slack. The first place you need to go to for help with these programs is the BenefitsCheckUp.org website that's run by the National Council on Aging. You need to go there, and use the wizard there that helps you understand what services you can look to for some help.

If you are thinking of picking a retirement home for when you finally hang your hat, reading up about the best place to retire, you often come across advice on how there are new options that open up all the time. Some people will tell you about how the super-luxury retirement communities being built in all the sunny places in the South are the best. Some will say that you can head over to places like Colombia to make your dollar go twice as far as it ever will in America. Others wonder if moving to Malaysia or Eastern Europe wouldn't be such a bad idea for the way it makes the dollar go even farther. All the while though, there are some whose answer to the question of what the best place to retire is, will go to something mysterious like “everywhere, and nowhere”.

Retiring baby boomers, more than ever before, are deciding that the best retirement place to pick can be in a luxury motorhome out on the road. Boomers, or many of them at least, are beginning to wonder about what fun it can be staying nailed to a spot in a second home or a winter retreat.