Retirement Planning
Bob Carlson shares miscellaneous advice on retirement and related topics
Found 97 Articles.
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New Rules for Donating Used Cars
Plans need to be revised by taxpayers who intended to reap big tax breaks by donating used cars, boats, or planes to charity. Congress rewrote the law in 2004, and the IRS recently issued rules explaining the new law. Under the old law, a taxpayer could donate a used car to charity and deduct the […]
How to Ensure Your Pension Is Safe
The recent termination of the United Airlines pension plan put pension safety on the front burner. The news quickly was followed in Congress by hearings and reports on the underfunding of both corporate pension plans and the government guarantee agency, the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation. Most large companies offer some kind of a guaranteed pension […]
How Pension Payouts Are Affected By Interest Rates
The prospect of rising interest rates this year could affect retirement payouts. If your retirement plan offers a choice between an annuity and a lump sum and you were planning to retire in the next year or two, pay attention now. Lump sum payouts increase as interest rates fall and decrease as rates rise. The […]
How to Reap More From Selling a Business
Business sellers often leave a lot of money on the table. They pay extra taxes on the sale, because they do not use some key tax breaks. We’ll look at one of those strategies in this visit. There are two problems a business seller must solve. One is liquidity. The seller wants cash for the […]
Little-Known Money-Saving Deals
Official figures say inflation is under control, but some of your regular expenses are rising steeply. You can beat many of these cost increases. You also can maximize savings on other expenses by doing some smart comparison shopping. Auto insurance. There is a revolution taking place in automobile insurance, sparked by Progressive Insurance. Instead of […]
Sell or Rent the Old Home?
When you no longer plan to use a house, is it better to sell or rent that residence or second home? The question faces many retirees, and even many pre-retirees. Of course, not everyone has this choice. They need to sell the former residence or second home in order to buy the new house and […]
The Rising Cost of Retirement
The standard retirement planning advice is to plan on spending 65% to 85% of your pre-retirement income each year of retirement. Unfortunately, that is a fallacy. Following that advice could diminish your retirement. Proof is in the latest Retirement Replacement Ratio Study, sponsored by Aon, a financial services company, and conducted by professors at Georgia […]
How to Beat Higher Property Taxes
Real estate values are climbing, and local property taxes are soaring with them. If the real estate tax rate stays the same and your home appreciates, your real estate tax bill rises at the same rate as the appreciation. In my recent trip to Naples, Fla., I learned that the prices of most residences there […]
