If you're a pilot for Southwest Airlines and save through your company 401(k), congratulations. You've invested in the country's highest-rated retirement savings plan of 2011.

On Tuesday, BrightScope, the independent 401(k) rating service, released its annual list of the top retirement plans with assets of more than $1 billion. In addition to Southwest, companies in internet services, pharmaceutical manufacturing, management consulting, oil and gas production, and financial services topped the list.

Hard times are stopping many people from moving for retirement or work, according to Census Bureau data and a new Associated Press/LifeGoesStrong.com poll. The current mobility level, or how many Americans move each year, is the lowest since 1948, when the Census Bureau started tracking the data.

The unsteady economy exacerbated a trend toward fewer moves that had been gaining ground for several decades due to more two-income families that find it harder to relocate for work and an aging population that's less mobile, according to the Associated Press.

The Obama administration is abandoning the long-term care insurance that was included in the health-care reform package passed by Congress in 2010 after concluding that the program was financially unworkable.

In a letter to Congress, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius announced cancellation of the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) program. The program would have enabled working adults to purchase government-administered insurance to cover their nonmedical costs if they became disabled and needed help with daily living activities such as bathing, dressing and housework. The insurance also could have been used to cover the cost of special technology and transportation for the disabled. (Here's a SecondAct column by Mark Miller on the program.)

Someday you'll want to stop working so hard. Or you'll want to work differently. Or not at all. Your plan may be to scale back to a less-demanding job with more flexibility, more time for travel, hobbies, or pursuing that dream you never had time to make happen.

The SecondAct Retirement Savings Center is here to get you there.

We're excited to launch our new savings center, which greatly expands SecondAct's coverage of retirement planning in one easy-to-browse location.

The battle over raising the debt ceiling has sent disapproval of Congress to its highest level on record and left most Americans saying that creating jobs should now take priority over cutting spending, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll. A record 82 percent of Americans said they disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job.

The debt-ceiling agreement passed by Congress and signed by President Obama this week calls for cuts of $2 trillion in the next 10 years. But threats to Medicare and Social Security were averted -- for now.

Lake Forest, Calif., resident Robyn Cole, 56, had always wanted to enjoy retirement with her husband, John, but the differential in their ages created a dilemma.

"If I had waited until I was 65, he would have been 77," says Cole, a former golf course marketing director. "I told him, 'I want to be playing with you, not going to work while you go golfing or to the beach. And I want us to have more years to do things together.'"

With negotiations over raising the national debt ceiling reaching a fever pitch, Social Security became a bargaining chip this week.

U.S. News and World Report says that President Obama and members of Congress have begun looking at the annual cost-of-living increases built into Social Security and other tax and spending programs as a potential source of future savings. "Adjusting the consumer price index, which the Bureau of Labor Statistics uses to determine how much the cost of living goes up each year, could save hundreds of billions of dollars for the federal government," Alex Parker writes. "It is reportedly among the ideas being discussed during the closed-door debt-ceiling negotiations."

Americans are getting older, but some cities are aging faster than others, according to an analysis from The Brookings Institute.

As boomers move to warmer climates, cities such as Scranton, Penn., have seen a decrease in over 65 populations, while others, such as Raleigh, N.C., and Albuquerque, N.M., have seen a marked increase, according to a Huffington Post report on the study.

There's no question -- people in the United States are waiting longer to retire.

Whether it's because they're motivated to stay active in a career, want to make a difference in the world or struggling with skyrocketing bills, 46 percent of U.S. employees over 50 now say they plan to work longer than they once expected. A third of workers 55 to 64 expect to work at least five years more than originally planned, according to a recent Towers Watson survey.

When husbands and wives or longtime partners start thinking about retirement, they need to have "the talk."

Having a heart-to-heart dialogue about the next stage of life -- when each wants to stop working, what each wants to do next, where each wants to live and how much money the couple needs to live on -- takes a lot of stress out of the equation, says Dorian Mintzer, a Boston psychologist and career/life transition coach.