Robert Tillman

Retirement Income & Social Security Strategy

Age 73 · Retired CPA and financial literacy advocate

I grew up in rural Mississippi, the first in my family to go to college, and I paid for every semester myself. Money was never abstract to me — it was the difference between options and no options. I spent 40 years as a CPA in Atlanta, helping businesses and families make sense of their finances, and I retired at 65 having made most of the right moves — and a few expensive wrong ones. Now I volunteer at a senior center teaching basic retirement financial literacy, tend a small vegetable garden in my backyard that my wife tolerates with great patience, and spend Saturday mornings fishing at the lake where I proposed to her 44 years ago. I write because too many people reach retirement without the numbers anyone bothered to explain to them.