You’ve been putting money away in your IRA for much of your life to have some measure of economic security in your senior years (and to reduce your taxable income in boon years). And through some mixture of discipline, good fortune and wits you find that don’t have to use your IRA savings the moment they become available to you at age 59½. Good for you. Keep in mind, upon reaching age 70½ you must completely change your mindset because the U.S. Government requires you to start withdrawing money. It’s called Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs).
If you’re like many of our
A 55-year-old friend, Jen, recently asked my opinion about long-term care insurance. Very few Americans, about eight percent, have long-term care insurance policies. Jen, who is at the age when many are weighing the pros and cons of long-term care insurance, had thought about buying a policy but didn’t feel like she had the money to do so. Recently Jen received an inheritance, as Muriel, her mother, passed away at age 87. Now Jen has the funds to pay for long-term care insurance (LTC) but is having second thoughts about it based on her experience with mom. Muriel had purchased
In 2005, everyone I knew was buying real estate. With no experience and no money, they bought properties they couldn’t afford and were convinced they were going to make a fortune.
Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way, and most of them now have a foreclosure or short sale in their past.
Does that make real estate a bad investment? No. It’s an investment. The good or bad part comes from how you approach it. What’s good for one person can be bad for another.
To find out how to make real estate investments work, I decided to talk with a few experienced
Retirees face new tax issues when they stop working (or start working part-time). And it affects you whether or not you change tax brackets.
Once retired, many of us will have somewhat lower income than in prime working years. And that implies lower taxes, but most also will have multiple sources of income. And that complicates tax payment for those who are used to a single source of income. There will be Social Security income, minimum required distribution income from tax-advantaged retirement accounts and perhaps other income from investments, property, freelance or part-time work, etc.
So, instead of getting a single paycheck
Smart investors follow a plan; specifically an asset allocation plan.
An asset allocation plan tells you how much of your total investments should be in stocks versus bonds and then gets into additional detail, such as how much should be in large company U.S. stocks (or index funds) vs. international vs. small cap.
You maintain investment ratios by rebalancing on a predetermined basis, such as once a year. In a 401(k) plan, rebalancing is often accomplished automatically by checking a box that says something like “rebalance every x months to this allocation.”
In general, while you are saving, rebalancing can be easy. If
Imagine your spouse is ill, and you meet with an estate planning attorney to get your family affairs in order. Your attorney drafts a trust document and a will. You and your spouse sign it. You think everything is fine.
Your spouse passes, and shortly after that, you find that the accounts are not set up to transfer the way you both intended. Everything is not fine. Can this happen?
Yes, and it happens all the time.
The situation described above happened to a client couple that I’ll call Ralph and Sue. It was a second marriage, they had no children in common,
Not all financial planners or advisors have to consider what is in your best interest when they make investment recommendations. A large number of them make recommendations that they think are appropriate, but they don’t have to have supporting documentation or research to show why this recommendation is in your best interest. In many cases, these advisors are trained sales people and are unaware of other options that may be a better fit for your financial circumstances.
However, a new law may begin to change this. A “fiduciary” is someone who legally and ethically must act in their client’s best interest.
As a financial planner, my life is about projecting unknowns. I often tell clients the only thing I can guarantee is once we put the numbers on paper, they’re wrong. Life doesn’t work in a nice linear fashion the way projections do. But by using projections, we can establish a range of possible outcomes, and plan based on that range.
As many unknowns as there are, I realize when it comes to the financial markets and human behavior, there are some things that are quite certain. Human beings want to believe someone out there knows the future. Normally, I shy away
If your company offers a pension, when you retire, you’ll have to decide how you want to take that pension. There are three big decisions you’ll need to make, although not all company pensions offer all choices.
These decisions are:
Should you take your pension as a lump sum (you get cash up front that you can rollover to an IRA account) or as an annuity (you get monthly payments for life)?
When should you start your pension? Now, or would you get a higher monthly payment if you wait and start at 62, or 65?
What type of survivor option should
How would you like to go from running out of money in retirement, to instantly having a surplus that allows you to travel and leave money to heirs? I can show you how… Use an online retirement calculator. Or use a spreadsheet projection with an unrealistic set of assumptions. Or use a financial planner that doesn’t understand how drawing money out impacts the internal rate of return you’ll earn on investments.
With one erroneous assumption, you go from the poorhouse to the penthouse. That should scare you. It scares me. And because I am in the business of making retirement calculations
