FYI: Next month, Social Security officials will deliver a reminder to retirees about one of the most important retirement planning challenges: inflation.
I’m betting inflation isn’t a topic you’ve thought much about lately. That’s understandable because consumer prices have been fairly quiet since the early 1980s. But the Social Security cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, for 2020, to be announced in mid-October, offers a good opportunity to consider inflation and your retirement plan.
Retirement researcher Dirk Cotton noted in a recent blog post that compounded inflation rates by decade from 1900 to the present averaged 3.15%--but there were four periods (1913 through 1919, the 1940s, the 1970s, and 1980s) when inflation was significantly higher than the average. Those spikes typically arrive without any advance warning.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.morningstar.com/articles/947130/inflation-and-your-retirement
