Retirment

Call it retirement anxiety, or maybe recession obsession. For all of their married life, Patrick Webster, 63, and Susie Martin, 54, have been extremely frugal. Webster and Martin, who both work at Marymount College in Rancho Palos Verdes, have been stashing away their combined income at an enviable rate - more than 25% - for retirement. Together they have more than $1 million in investments and no debt. But rather than feeling reasonably secure about their financial future, they dread a return of hard times.

BALTIMORE - Gary Stevens on Saturday became the oldest jockey to win the Preakness, and the Hall of Famer has Clark Masterson to thank. Masterson, a personal trainer based in Bellevue, Wash., helped the 50-year-old jockey lose 25 pounds and nearly 8% body fat during two months of workouts last year. It allowed Stevens to come out of retirement after seven years and resume a riding career that produced eight Triple Crown victories and nearly 5,000 other victories. Running in his 17th Preakness, Stevens rode Oxbow to his third win. Stevens also won the race in 1997 (aboard Silver Charm)

The rumors of Charles "Doc" Rutherford's retirement from Orange Coast College are exaggerated. Officially, Rutherford did retire after 31 years as a jazz instructor at the Costa Mesa community college. In fact, there was a big surprise retirement party for him last December with many of his former pupils, now professional musicians, in attendance. Still, three days and some nights each week this semester, he can be found on campus directing bands.

Call it retirement anxiety, or maybe recession obsession. For all of their married life, Patrick Webster, 63, and Susie Martin, 54, have been extremely frugal. Webster and Martin, who both work at Marymount College in Rancho Palos Verdes, have been stashing away their combined income at an enviable rate - more than 25% - for retirement. Together they have more than $1 million in investments and no debt. But rather than feeling reasonably secure about their financial future, they dread a return of hard times.

My wife does not work and is covered by my employer's health insurance plan. I am 60, she is 53. If I retire in five or seven years and go on Medicare, what does that mean for my wife? At most, she will be only 60. Do we have to purchase private insurance (which I suspect will be very expensive)? Or is there some kind of Medicare coverage for dependent spouses? Unfortunately for you and for millions of other couples in your position, Medicare does not provide dependent coverage.

He drives through rain, sleet and snow to deliver your letters. You may be grateful, but think about this: Would you buy a used car from that mail carrier? Down at the Oxnard post office's transportation yard, they hope so. Since last month, U.S. Postal Service officials have been quietly opening the department's biggest sale of retired delivery jeeps in more than five years.

Neil Clark Warren thinks he's the best match for EHarmony Inc. In a move that caused his friends to call him crazy, the 78-year-old EHarmony founder came out of retirement in July to become chief executive, looking to resuscitate one of the most recognized online dating services that was struggling amid increased competition. "We'd gotten a bit lost," Warren said recently at the company's Santa Monica headquarters, decorated with hundreds of photos of couples who met on the website.

BALTIMORE - Gary Stevens on Saturday became the oldest jockey to win the Preakness, and the Hall of Famer has Clark Masterson to thank. Masterson, a personal trainer based in Bellevue, Wash., helped the 50-year-old jockey lose 25 pounds and nearly 8% body fat during two months of workouts last year. It allowed Stevens to come out of retirement after seven years and resume a riding career that produced eight Triple Crown victories and nearly 5,000 other victories. Running in his 17th Preakness, Stevens rode Oxbow to his third win. Stevens also won the race in 1997 (aboard Silver Charm)

Nearly 3 in 10 Americans are extremely downbeat about their prospects for retirement, the highest level of pessimism ever recorded, according to a survey released Tuesday. The poll by the Employee Benefit Research Institute showed that 28% of Americans are "not at all confident" they'll be able to have a comfortable retirement. That's up from 23% last year and the worst degree of pessimism in the nearly 25-year history of the poll, one of the longest-running in the nation. Another 21% are "not too confident" in their retirement prospects - meaning that roughly 1 of every 2 Americans is worried about the outlook for their so-called golden years.

Forget about retiring at 55. Or 65. Or perhaps even 75. One-quarter of middle-class Americans fear that they will have to work until they're at least 80 to afford a comfortable retirement (if "retirement" is even the right word, given that many of these people may never actually retire). A survey released Wednesday by Wells Fargo & Co. also found that nearly three-quarters of Americans expect to continue working into what long has been considered retirement age. A little more than half of those said they'll need to work to pay their bills, while the rest said they want to keep working.

If Sir Alex Ferguson had stuck with his original plan, today we might be praising his pasta and Chinese noodles rather than his decision to start Robin van Persie over Wayne Rooney. Or if he had chosen to pursue his interest in U.S. history, particularly the Civil War and the JFK assassination, he might have become a master teacher of men rather than a master motivator of them. But then again, if Ferguson hadn't passed on those two options to become the most successful coach in British soccer history, we wouldn't be calling him sir. After all few chefs, and even fewer U.S. history buffs, get knighted by the queen.

The Senate Judiciary Committee took up comprehensive immigration reform late last week. And, as expected, opponents are already rushing to derail it, arguing that any bill that legalizes the vast majority of undocumented immigrants in the United States will cost billions of dollars and place an unfair burden on taxpayers. Such arguments are merely scare tactics. There's no doubt that granting citizenship to millions of immigrants 13 years from now, as the Senate bill would, will carry a cost, but how much is unclear.

California energy officials are preparing for another summer without the San Onofre power station while facing the growing possibility that the nuclear plant will never return to service. The nuclear plant, one of only two in the state, was powered down more than a year ago when a small amount of radioactive mist leaked from one of the thousands of tubes in the plant's steam generators. Southern California Edison officials said in financial statements last week that if federal regulators do not agree to the utility's proposal to restart one of the plant's two units at partial power, they might elect to retire the plant completely by the end of the year.

Democratic Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, who sometimes crossed his party in the powerful role of Finance Committee chairman, announced Tuesday he would retire at the end of his term - complicating Democrats' efforts to keep control of the Senate in the 2014 midterm election. The move caught many in Washington by surprise. Baucus had stockpiled $5 million - a fortune by Montana standards - and voted last week to oppose compromise gun control legislation, which some viewed as a calculation aimed at winning reelection in his libertarian-leaning state.

For more than half of my 38 years in the news business, I've been a member of a union, though I'm not currently. And my late father was a proud Teamster for decades. So I appreciate the goods that unions deliver to nearly 15 million members in the United States: living wages and good benefits. Workplace safety. A measure of job security. And protection against management abuse. In other words, don't count me among those who vilify organized labor, which in many parts of the country offers the best hope for hanging on to a place in the middle class.

Is it any surprise that on a warm spring day, thousands of Southern Californians went in search of a good book - and a chance to meet the person who wrote it? Not to Susan Burton, a retired school librarian from Fontana, who was among the crowds that converged Sunday morning on the USC campus for the final day of the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. "I think this is a fabulous place to be," she said as she stood in line with a friend to hear a discussion about crime writing with former L.A. Deputy Dist.

Twelve of California's 58 counties have implemented the provisions of Proposition 90, that allow inter-county transfers of Proposition 13 base-year property tax values for homeowners 55 or older.

As the largest ever group of senior citizens now barges into old age, it's clear that things are going to be mighty different. On the leading edge of that generation are gay and lesbian senior citizens who are helping to define the new rules, starting with the basics: housing. Nationwide, there are the beginnings of a move to develop and build retirement communities for older gays and lesbians, a generally well-heeled segment of the senior population.

MEXICO CITY - Gen. Tomas Angeles Dauahare, who once held the plum post of military attache to the Mexican Embassy in Washington, was rumored to be the next defense minister of Mexico. Until that day in May last year when he and three other top military men were arrested on suspicion of working on behalf of a notorious drug cartel. It was the largest indictment of army officers on charges of drug-trafficking in recent memory, hailed in many quarters as proof of then-President Felipe Calderon's determination to root out corruption at every level.