Is Estate Planning Only For Rich People?
I recently had the pleasure of teaching two classes called ‘Your Retirement And Taxes.’ In the classes, we sought to deepen our understanding of how our tax system works as it pertains to investments and income sources, as well as consider some strategies available to a retiree to pay only their fair share of taxes during retirement. While the subject …
The Roth IRA Is Taking Your Medicine
Taxes, taxes, taxes. When we celebrate Independence Day each year, it’s easy to focus on the fireworks and forget that much of our dispute was over taxes. After all, wasn’t that part of the deal when we declared to the British that we wanted to see other people? That ‘taxation without representation’ thing, right? Well, in the hundreds of years …
Foodies, Homebodies, and Globetrotters: Which Retiree Are You?
Always on the lookout for new retirement insights, I stumbled upon a 2015 J.P. Morgan study (Spending In Retirement – Roy, Carson) that provided yet another way to view spending patterns of retirees. In the past, I’ve written about something called the ‘retirement smile’ that highlights the natural changes in spending patterns during successive phases of a typical retirement, during the …
Tick, Tock: How Time Touches So Many Aspects Of Retirement Planning
If there’s one asset class that’s become much more valuable than all of the others, it’s time. It’s finite, making it scarce. It’s fluid, making it difficult to firmly grasp. It’s misunderstood, allowing it to escape the reaches of our attempts at mastery of it. In fact, time is the very asset we’ll willingly trade all of the rest of …
Thank you for supporting the 2018 Fall Festival Make-A-Wish® campaign!
Your support will help Make-A-Wish create life-changing wishes for children battling critical illnesses. We are thrilled to announce this year’s campaign raised over $10,000.00 for local wishes! Without your efforts, we would not be able to make wishes like Connor’s wish to go on a Disney Cruise come true! At one year old, Connor was diagnosed with a rare form …
Back to the Basics Social Security Planning 101
Just a Few Drops Into the Ocean One of the core building blocks of a retirement income plan is Social Security. Earned over decades of working and paying taxes into the system, Social Security recipients have turned the corner and are now extracting income from this unique asset. But what’s so surprising is how nonchalant many retirees are about this …
Briefcase Study
When 2018 came to a close, the month of December was not without drama. The stock market was suffering meaningful declines. There were quite a few days of 500, 600, and 700-point losses. With this much volatility, it leaves a retired or retiring investor to ask, “Who am I, as an investor? How should I be investing when markets can …
‘Golden Decade’ Offers Golden Opportunity to Get Taxes Under Control
If you are between the ages of 60 and 70, the time could be right to pump some money out of big, fat 401(k)s and traditional IRAs into tax-free Roth accounts. If a financial professional planned your 60th birthday party, the balloons and streamers wouldn’t be black. They’d be gold. Some advisers even refer to the ages between 60 and …
Lack of Financial Information Is No Longer the Problem. Knowing How to Process It Is.
The key to good financial decisions is knowing how to sort through the flood of information out there. How do you do that? Ask the right questions. Specifically, these five. Thanks to new technologies, investing is more accessible than ever. You can buy stocks, bonds and mutual funds with a click of a mouse, or even with an app on …
C.A.N. You Handle It? Dialing in Your Investment Risk
Your risk tolerance can be boiled down into three words: capacity, attitude and need. Getting a grip on those concepts is the key to designing an appropriate portfolio for your retirement. “In investing, what is comfortable is rarely profitable.” So says investment adviser to PIMCO, Robert Arnott. While there’s certainly truth to this, most investors would be wise to consider just …
