How Statistics Can Lead Us To A Faulty Conclusion
There’s a great expression that goes something like this: 84% of statistics are made up on the spot. See what happened there? We’ll often see statistics being used for persuasive purposes, but what if there’s more to most stats than meets the eye. What if the story being sold isn’t the real story at all? What’s more, how often are …
Love Is A Verb: Caring For Others By Helping Them Plan
A friend’s grandmother, Mary, recently passed away at the age of 99. A kind, service-oriented woman who packed two lifetimes into her one, she exemplified what it means to have lived a good life. It’s clear that she served others, and living to 99 required that she also be served. If there’s any doubt that love is action, you should …
Diversification: Always Something To Celebrate (And Apologize For)
This may feel like an old, well-worn topic, but please bear with me; I hope to present a new twist. Diversification is a time-tested way for investors to manage the inherent risks of investing by owning lots of different kinds of assets. Diversification takes many forms, but often looks like this example: owning 60% of a portfolio in stocks and …
Healthcare May Be Broken, But Your Retirement Plan Doesn’t Need To Be
Live on less than you earn, pay less interest on debts than you receive on your assets, mind your taxes, and you’ll be fine. It sounds so simple, and it is. Similarly, eat fewer calories than you burn, exercise regularly, avoid running red lights in your car, and you’ll be fine. It sounds so simple, and yet it’s not. Why? …
Match the Money to the Need
I did a radio show interview a few years ago and the host of the show asked me, “What’s one piece of advice you’d offer retirees who are concerned about planning their retirement?” It’s a fair question but admittedly difficult to answer in an era of sound bites. In an interview like that, I’m thinking about what the perfect answer …
Retirement Plan Buyer’s Guide
Car buyers use them and so do people shopping for appliances. The buyer’s guide can be an extremely valuable resource for the person who wishes to compare and contrast the options available to them. But what about retirement plans? Is it possible to test-drive various options for converting one’s nest egg into an income for life? While I’m not aware …
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 …
