When you think of your life in retirement you imagine yourself traveling the world, spending quality time with family and friends, pursuing simple pleasures, and living the life of ease and luxury.

With the children gone and various bills paid, it’s easy to assume that you’ll have sufficient income coming in to maintain your desired standard of living during retirement.

The lifestyle of the majority of senior citizens is anything but a life of ease and luxury. After 30 years of working hard, raising a family, and trying to maintain a quality standard of living, the thing that’s always procrastinated and often neglected is retirement planning. Creating your desired retirement lifestyle is going to take more than wishful thinking and groundless assumptions. It’s going to take proactive planning and purposeful execution.

“Everyone runs up a little credit card debt, right?” That’s what many people tell themselves to justify carrying excessive debit. But the fact is undisciplined spending and poor credit management are serious problems that must be addressed. The Pennsylvania Institute of Certified Public Accountants provides these following four signs that show your debt and spending are out of control, and offers advice on what to do if they are.

Commonwealth business

OCT. 28—The Saint Vincent College Small Business Development will host “Doing Business With the Commonwealth” Workshop from 9 a.m.-12 p.m. at 300 Fraser Purchase Rd., Latrobe. This workshop provides information to individuals interested in doing business with the government. A representative from the Department of General Services will discuss various important topics along with certification of minority- and women- owned businesses. For more information, call 724-537-4572.

I saw my first in-store Christmas tree ornament display in August. August! I had just gotten accustomed to seeing holiday displays right after Halloween when the poor little ghost and goblin displays were squeezed out by glittering artificial trees and ornament spreads. But Christmas trees before ghouls? What’s going on?

I think I can tell you because my employer, the Nielsen Company, is the largest marketing research company in the world. We measure consumer behavior trends—what you buy and what you watch, including mobile and online services. We also provide annual holiday spending predictions (which are pretty accurate, having fallen within 1.5 percent of actual results on unit and dollar sales the two previous seasons) through the combination of a survey of nearly 25,000 demographically representative U.S. households (which includes people who look like us) and more than 500 category-level forecasts of core items sold across food, drug and mass merchandiser stores (including Walmart).