Retirement Articles
Found 3645 Articles.
Get access to 4381 articles by subscribing to Retirement Watch and Retirement Watch Spotlight Series.
More on the Annuity Puzzle
Economists think everyone should convert most of their retirement nest eggs into annuities and receive a stream of income that’s guaranteed for life. Very few people actually do that. They want to keep control and have the hope of achieving a higher return, even when they don’t invest aggressively or have a good investment track […]
Understanding the Five-Year Waiting Period for Converted IRAs
The five-year waiting period for Roth IRAs causes some confusion, because the rules are confusing. For a distribution from a Roth IRA to be tax-free, it must be made after the later of the owner’s turning age 59½ and when the owner has had the Roth IRA for at least five years. For distributions from […]
Expanding the Roth IRA Opportunity
Roth IRAs remain one of the most neglected tax and financial planning opportunities. Even many of those who convert their traditional IRAs to Roths don’t take advantage of all the strategies available to maximize tax-free wealth. It’s understandable that people are slow to convert their traditional IRAs to Roths. There are many factors to evaluate […]
Fixing Social Security Mistakes
Most people start receiving Social Security benefits at the wrong time. Beginning Social Security retirement benefits early can cost you and your family tens of thousands of dollars of income compounded over your lifetimes. A significant percentage begins receiving benefits when they first are eligible at age 62. Only a small percentage waits until age […]
SUBSCRIBE TO RETIREMENT WATCH
What you don’t know about retirement can hurt you. In fact, just a few wrong decisions in your investments, taxes, or estate planning could completely derail your retirement plans. Worse yet, the rules of the game keep changing, making it harder to keep up. For these reasons, I’ve assembled all the key points – everything you need to know — into one comprehensive report. Click here today for free access.
Curbing the High Cost of Retirement Medical Care
The cost of medical care continues to rise and to be the wild card in retirement plans. Reports and studies update their estimates of the cost of retirement medical care each year. They show the cost to be high and also very unpredictable for individual retirees and couples. The studies focus on average or median […]
March 2014
March 28, 2014 04:14 p.m. Your Retirement Finance Week in Review Periods of low volatility in the markets often are followed by periods of high volatility. Stock market volatility in 2013 was low, and it’s been followed by a lot of volatility in the first quarter of 2014. But the volatility has taken investors on […]
Using Protection Trusts in Your Estate Planning to Help Heirs
“Great Fortunes Lost” was the title of an article in Fortune magazine some years ago. It described how various individuals, usually heirs, lost or squandered very large fortunes. Some of the individuals lost more than money. They lost their health or wasted their lives because of the effects wealth had on them. Many people I […]
Breaking the 4% Retirement Spending Rule
JP Morgan joins us among those who criticize the 4% rule for determining retirement spending. While widely accepted among financial planners, the rule has various weaknesses. By using the rule methodically, retirees have a major risk of spending either too much or too little in retirement based on their circumstances. JP Morgan constructed a model […]
