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Congratulations! Believe it or not, you're halfway done. Before you jump into today's homework, take a minute a fill out the Halftime Survey. It will let you rate your own progress and help you identify which areas of your retirement plan you might want to spend a little more time on.

Sit back, close your eyes, and imagine the retirement possibilities. What do you want to do?  How do you really want to spend your time?  Are you planning on retiring early or starting a new career? Are you planning to bring in some income from your retirement activities?

Ok, open your eyes and write down some of the possibilities. Think about some of the following questions:

• Are there any costs associated with these activities? If so, can you quantify them so they'll be incorporated in your retirement expenses? How long will these costs last?
• Will any of these activities generate income? If so, how much and for how long?

It might take some time to actually filter through some of your ideas, mold them, and determine if this is something you really want to do, but the key is to make sure you can do it if you want to. 

The rest of the living equation. After thinking about what you want to do, start to think about how and where you might want to live. There is a chart in your workbook to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of owning vs. renting (For example, if you own, you might have a mortgage, taxes, and maintenance to deal with. If you rent, you may feel that you have less of a home.) and a chart that you can start to fill out that helps you envision where you want to live, what you want to do with your time there, and expected costs associated with living there (taxes, housing costs, quality of life) on pages 19 and 20 of your workbook.

Once you have a better idea of the geographic area you're interested in, you can use the Internet to take a virtual tour of almost anyplace in the world from the comfort of your La-Z-Boy. Here are some tools to help you with your research:

• Yahoo!'s Get Local -- Enter the name of a town or even a zip code and the search engine will come back with just about everything you can imagine about that area. Not only will it give you a list of all of the businesses with websites in that town, it also provides things like the current weather forecast, local sports scores, and even links to area restaurants and government offices.

• Go to Stateline.org, select one of the states you listed, and click on "Go." When the next screen appears, scroll to the bottom of the page and move your cursor to the scrollable window on the left. While holding down your control key, scroll down the state listing, then highlight and click on your next two choices. When those states have all been selected, click on the word "Go."

Examine the comparison screen when it appears. How do your choices stack up with one another in regard to tax burdens, crime, income, and population? How do they compare to the national averages for this data? Do these statistics affect your feelings regarding their potential as retirement places of residence?

• Go to the Homefair.com Community Calculator and assume you will relocate from your present residence to a new city in retirement. Make the appropriate entries, and click on "Recommend Communities."

Click on one of the cities that appear in the next screen. How does that city compare to your present city of residence? How do your present city and the selected city compare to national averages? Do these statistics affect your feelings regarding your potential places of residence in retirement?

Need some ideas or some inspiration to get those dreams flowing?  Visit the Your Dreams board to see what other people are planning to do. Are you having some trouble deciding?  Why? What other factors go into these decisions?  Don't forget that these dreams can and may change -- that's cool! This is your dream -- have some fun with it!

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