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They're supposed to be the golden years. But for many people, retirement might turn out to be the black-and-blue years, reflecting high costs and other financial bruises.

The dangers range from saving too little to falling victim to scams. Here are some issues to which retirees and baby boomers nearing retirement should pay attention:

' Try to control the timing of your retirement.

Retirement planning is hard enough under normal situations, but it gets more difficult when your timetable gets cut short — as happens often.

People who are now retired generally left the workforce earlier than current workers think they'll quit, according to a survey of more than 1,300 people this year by the Employee Benefit Research Institute.

Specifically, current employees plan to work until age 65 on average. Yet people now retired said they stopped working at 62, a shortened horizon of three years. Of those who left prematurely, more than half cited health or disability issues.

The finding prompted Jacob Gold, a Scottsdale certified financial planner, to note that, for many people, the decision on when to retire won't be theirs to make.

' Beware misleading early-retirement pitches.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority in Washington, D.C., is warning about bad advice and even scams at seminars touting early retirement. FINRA officials are concerned about certain advisers who convince workers to cash out of their workplace retirement assets, lured by promises of big investment returns or poor explanations of the risks.

For example, FINRA last year fined Citigroup Global Markets $3 million, censured five of the firm's Charlotte, N.C., advisers and ordered $12.2 million in restitution to more than 200 BellSouth employees who retired early and cashed out company pensions and 401(k) accounts to invest the money with Citigroup.

The largely unsophisticated workers, mainly baby boomers, were told to expect returns around 12 percent and weren't adequately informed of the risks, according to FINRA.

' Be aware of factors that might crimp your ability to save for retirement.

It's no surprise that people who earn less don't sock away as much money for retirement. Nor do women, members of certain ethnic groups or people employed at small companies.

Whites tend to participate in workplace retirement plans at a fairly high rate. Blacks aren't far behind, yet Latinos lag noticeably, especially among those born in foreign nations, EBRI reports.

Women participate less than men, and so do people working at small companies. Only 29 percent of small-firm workers (entities with fewer than 25 employees) participate in retirement plans, compared to 66 percent of employees at big firms (1,000 people or more).

Small firms likely take retirement benefits less seriously and may have less money to administer their programs and provide matching funds. Also, small firms may tend to hire more people who are less likely to participate, such as young, lower-paid or part-time help, according to EBRI.

' Plan when to tap into Social Security benefits.

Now that the oldest baby boomers can begin taking early retirement benefits at age 62, should they? People who start early will obviously draw benefits for a longer span compared to those who start later, but their monthly Social Security income won't be as high. It's not an easy decision, especially since nobody knows for sure how long they'll live.

A new online calculator by MetLife does a nice job of illustrating the tradeoffs and defining your breakeven year — the age at which you come out ahead by waiting. The calculator (www.metlife.com/socialsecurity) is easy to use and takes only a few minutes to run.

The Social Security Administration offers an online calculator of its own at www.ssa.gov. (Search for break-even age under the section on retirement benefits calculators.)

Generally, it pays to wait, especially if you worry about outliving your assets.

“More than 70 percent of Americans apply for Social Security benefits as soon as they are eligible,” said Joseph Jordan, a MetLife senior vice president. Yet people who start early “run the risk of leaving money on the table . . . potentially putting them at risk of outliving their assets.”

This article appears in the May 25 issue of the Arizona Republic.

Reach Wiles at russ.wiles@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8616.

With nearly five months of 2008 in the books, mutual funds are still showing losses in general but not severe ones.

The typical domestic-stock fund is off 4 percent year to date through May 22, according to researcher Lipper Inc. Foreign funds, down 2.4 percent on average, have fared a bit better thanks to the weak dollar.

A few fund categories are even showing gains, including natural-resources funds (+14.2 percent), gold funds (+10 percent) and real estate funds (+2.7 percent). Weak sectors include financial services (-10.6 percent), telecom (-10.7 percent) and health (-7.7 percent).

Internationally, Latin American funds are enjoying a fine year, up 14.3 percent on average, while China funds are down 14 percent.

Funds that invest in small U.S. stocks are all over the board, with small-growth funds down 8 percent on average but small-value portfolios off just 1.2 percent.

I always used to chuckle at those gas stories before holiday weekends, the ones that quote a AAA representative trying to predict how fuel prices would impact travel plans.

Now, at these prices, I’m actually one of those people.

In my house, this month we had been thinking about planning a trip to far northern California to show the kids the giant coast redwoods, and combine it with visits to relatives in Los Angeles and Oakland. A few weeks ago it seemed feasible, but now I find myself rethinking those plans based on fuel costs.

Gas prices in California already are about $4 a gallon.

$4 a gallon. I can’t believe I just typed that.

The gas prices made me take a close look at the number of miles the trip would involve, then a realistic assessment of how far we were trying to drive in a set amount of time. Then I started wondering if it was all just too much time in the car with two kids in the back seat. Now we're rethinking the whole thing.

Too many negatives, and all because of this gas situation.

$4 a gallon. I still can’t believe I just typed that.

The woman stepped to the podium and faced a phalanx of television cameras in a room packed with reporters. She had no notes and needed none.

“This country,” she said, “is in need of comprehensive immigration reform.”

In certain circles, she would be immediately branded a member of the open borders crowd, a traitor who sides with those who seek to turn our country into Mexico.

That's how it is with the illegal immigration debate, where there is black and there is white and there is absolutely nothing in between.

You're either for us or against us; red, white and true blue or a lover of the lawless.

And yet there is Julie Erfle, a woman who has more of a right to outrage than any of us.

On Sept. 18, her husband, Phoenix police Officer Nick Erfle, was shot and killed by an illegal immigrant. He, who had fought through and survived two bouts with cancer, died in an instant in the middle of the morning, in the middle of the city. He was 33 years old.

On Thursday, his widow issued a call for Arizona to go to a place where the feds fear to tread. She asked that Gov. Janet Napolitano form a non-partisan task force to lead the way in finding the solution that this nation's so-called leaders cannot or will not provide.

“We need comprehensive immigration reform that puts safety and humanity on an equal footing,” she told the gathered press horde. “We cannot have one without the other.”

It was an astonishing thing to hear from a woman now left to raise two young sons by herself because of the express lack of humanity of a man who never should have been on the streets that day. I talked with her afterward, hoping to understand how she got from grief to compassion in eight pain-filled months. From her, I learned that the two go hand in hand. That hope must spring from suffering if we are to move forward and not just on.

“You have that anger,” she told me, “but it just doesn't lead you anywhere. I have believed ever since Nick was killed that there was something positive that would come out of that. I think that because of everything that we had gone through prior to that – and because of everything that he had gone through with his battle with cancer, which was so tremendous -- for him to die in that manner and at that time, it just seemed to me like something positive was supposed to come from that.”

And so the widow, standing in a place unimaginable to most of us, issued the challenge that will likely brand her an enemy combatant among some who have used her husband's death as a call to arms.

Of course, they won't listen. Nor will the others, the ones so quick to brand anyone who disagrees with them a racist, ignoring the fact that what angers most Americans isn't immigration but illegal immigration.

Sadly, neither group is really interested in the words of a woman who understands better than most the urgent need to secure our border. There is the battle, after all, to be fought on talk radio and in certain seats of power. There are careers to be built, constituencies to woo, political futures to secure.

Such people aren't interested in compromise.

The question is, what about the rest of us?

“I believe if we do this, we can finally find a solution,” Erfle told reporters. “ For far too long we have done nothing and because of that people across this country have paid dearly and some have paid with their lives.”

So says the woman who, tragically, knows what she's talking about.

“Doing nothing,” she said, “should not be an option.”

(Column published May 24, 2008.) 

From the political notebook:

John McCain, abetted by President Bush, is trying to depict Barack Obama as a foreign policy naïf for being willing to meet with the leaders of troubling countries.