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Social Security

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Using Home Equity to Fund Retirement

May 1, 2014

Key changes recently were made in reverse mortgages. You should be aware of the changes and how they affect the way reverse mortgages can help in-crease your financial independence. Properly used, they are tools for employing home equity to enhance your retirement. The first change is that the Federal Housing Administration restructured the program again […]

Coping with Lower Long-Term Stock Market Returns

April 4, 2014

Much of Bill Gross’s latest monthly essay is devoted to a eulogy for his recently-deceased pet cat. After this touching section is the meat of the essay. Gross states that returns from assets (all assets, not only stocks) are likely to be lower in the relevant future than they have been over the course of […]

Estate Planning with Roth IRAs

April 1, 2014

An IRA, especially a Roth IRA, is valuable for more than your retirement planning. Your estate plan can be much better when a Roth IRA is shrewdly used. Instead of looking at the front-end tax benefits and costs, take the long-term view. While converting a traditional IRA to a Roth can save estate taxes, Roth […]

Surprising Facts About Social Security

April 1, 2014

Over the years, from time to time I wrote about maximizing Social Security retirement benefits. Those pieces didn’t receive much of a reaction. More recently, Social Security strategies draw a lot of attention, presumably because of the large number of people now at or approaching traditional retirement age. There are recurring questions and issues that […]

Avoiding Social Security Mistakes

March 12, 2014

We write in Retirement Watch a lot about strategies for claiming Social Security retirement benefits. That’s because you have choices, and married couples have a lot of choices. The difference between the optimum choice and other choices can amount to tens of thousands of dollar or more over your lifetime. Unfortunately, people make a lot […]

Reviewing Stock Market Valuation Indicators

March 6, 2014

One reason I’ve greatly reduced the time spent listening to the financial cable channels is that guests and hosts make a lot of statements that aren’t backed by or even are contradicted by data. Consider arguments about what influences stock prices. On any day you’ll find a range of people who say stock prices follow […]

March 2014

March 1, 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 […]

Expanding the Roth IRA Opportunity

March 1, 2014

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 […]

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