According to reporting from the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies, retirees have a wide variety of savings and investments. Here are the average cash, savings, and home equity balances in the U.S. Keep reading to see how your accounts and investment types compares to that of most retirees. Use the NewRetirement Planner to see your…
An enjoyable retirement is the goal, right? You work your whole life and hopefully create and follow a plan so that you can kick back and do what you want to do when the time comes. Well, a recent survey from Nationwide suggests that all is not going according to plan for many retirees. The…
Are you wondering how to to retire overseas? If so, you’re in good company! Retiring Overseas Has Almost Doubled in Popularity Retiring abroad has become increasingly popular. According to the Social Security Administration, the number of retirees who draw Social Security outside the U.S. jumped 40%, to more than 413,000 between 2007 to 2017. And,…
Age is just a number. In fact, even the word “old” means less and less these days as many of us stay healthy and active well past the traditional retirement age of 65. Is 80 the new 40? Or, is 100 a better benchmark age for enjoying life and achieving interesting things? Preparing for retirement…
If you are worried about paying for retirement, it is worth evaluating the pros and cons of annuities. The Big Takeaways… Annuities are a great way to provide guaranteed lifetime income in retirement while hedging against inflation and other financial woes. Though less risky, annuities generally yield lower returns than other investment products, and…
When most people think about financial and retirement planning, feelings of stress, worry, and anxiety rise in our throats. This stress — while unpleasant — exists for good reason. Stress serves a purpose. Less than 50% of people have a written retirement plan. The majority of people simply don’t have enough saved for this time…
If you are in the countdown to retirement — marking the days until you can launch into the next stage of your life – this checklist is for you. In the past, many people thought of retirement as a time of life when things slowed down. Now, retirement is more of a blast off into…
Saving for retirement is hard. However, when you are still working, creating a retirement investment plan can be relatively straightforward. The goal is to simply grow the money. But, when you retire, your investment goals become multi-faceted, layered, and downright complicated. You still want your money to grow, but you have a whole lot of…
A new documentary, The Weight of Gold, explores the many mental health challenges that retired Olympic athletes face. You might be surprised to learn that those challenges are similar to what happens at retirement to many people in far more mundane jobs. Retired Olympic athletes – and anyone who has retired from a job where…
Were you the kid in kindergarten that secretly ate paste in the corner? Or were you the one solving all the math equations from the end of the book on your first day in class? (I knew those kids. Both of them were in my class, and I’m not yet admitting to being one of…
Personal finance, investments and much more. Find fiction and many books on achieving a meaningful, happy, healthy and successful retirement.
After a nearly devastating set of personal crises – cancer, near bankruptcy and a suicide attempt by his father – Bruce Feiler spent five years talking to people about their biggest life transitions. He analyzed what patterns people experienced and what was the key to thriving after a big event. The result is a method…
The summer of 2020 hasn’t felt much like a summer since we’ve been working from home and not traveling since March. Whether you’re going on an all-American road trip in August, making s’mores in the backyard, or even if your vacation plans have been put on hold till 2021, these new and newly updated retirement…
Terror about retirement spending is not uncommon. In fact, most people are worried about spending their nest egg and running out of money. After all, you have been conditioned for decades to earn, not spend. You were probably a teenager when you opened your first paycheck and officially started the cycle of earning and spending…
While we’re in the daily grind of working for a living, we often visualize life after retirement as happy, stress-free relaxation. Getting a little R&R is certainly important, but there is a limit to the amount of napping, puttering around the house and daytime television a person can take. Without a plan for life…
While pensions are not nearly as common as they once were, they are a very important part of the retirement plans for many of society’s most valued workers: teachers, police officers, fire fighters and more! However, it is surprisingly hard to find a reliable retirement calculator with pension inputs. 5 Retirement Calculators With Pension Controls:…
To build wealth, most people think you need a Wall Street job, good luck or just being born into advantageous circumstances. Those things definitely help, but building wealth can happen by following a few best practices and habits consistently. And, you can even begin building wealth in your 50s. It is definitely not too late.…
Your brain is not necessarily set up in a way that makes it easy to plan a secure retirement. You have cognitive biases — faulty ways of thinking that are unfortunately hardwired into your brain — that work against you. Behavioral finance and behavioral economics are the study of these phenomena. Understanding behavioral finance and…
You want to have a better retirement. But how do you get there? You could spend hours researching the latest science behind happiness, personal finance and investment theory, and health research. Or you can take a few minutes to watch the best TED Talks related to retirement. With their engaging speakers and easy-to-digest format, even…
Life expectancy has mostly been rising in the United States — overall. However, recent research has found that there are significant differences in life expectancy by county. In fact, in many counties, the average life expectancy is 20 years — TWENTY years — shorter than in other areas.The good news is that some areas of…
What happens to your debt when you die? It’s possible that an individual can have so much debt after they die that it will wipe out the assets that they’d hoped to leave for their heirs. In some situations, family members may be on the hook for their deceased relative’s debt.However, this all depends on…
When approaching retirement, it’s common for people to start thinking about legacy planning: how they’ll be remembered and what they’ll leave behind. In most cases, leaving a legacy for children, grandchildren, or charities – and other causes people are passionate about – takes careful planning and the advice of a financial planner. Read on for…
Pensions have pretty much gone away. We spend 20 to 30 years in retirement. And Social Security covers only a fraction of our retirement expenses. This means we are pretty much responsible for saving everything we need for retirement on our own. This may seem like a daunting challenge; some people might consider the help…
Financial advisor fees can be confusing because different kinds of financial advisors have various ways of charging for their services. These are the most common types of fee structures: commissions; flat or hourly fees; assets under management (AUM); and fee-based (a combination of fees and commissions). All of these payment methods are used by legitimate…
How often have you met with your financial planner? Never? Many people are afraid of contacting a financial planning professional sometimes because they don’t think they have enough to invest or because they are afraid they will be sold products they don’t need. On the other hand, there are so many considerations when planning for…