The Ulysses Strategy (Ulysses is the Latin name for Odysseus) is a method financial planners developed to keep savers and investors from listening to the sirens’ call that could wreck their financial ship. The Story of Ulysses and the Sirens In “The Odyssey,” the great adventurer Odysseus spends ten years trying to get home safely…
They say that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. The bad news is that the last 50 years have seen 5 major financial, market, or economic crises. The good news is that each crisis has lessons that you can apply today to help you build more wealth and feel…
A study from a team of researchers at Oregon State University shows that the longer you wait to retire, the longer you will likely live. So if you are planning to put off retirement until after 65, get your retirement plan ready — you’ll want to make sure you have planned to afford the extra…
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…
Episode 46 of the NewRetirement podcast is an interview with Jerry Patterson — Principal Financial’s senior vice president of workplace savings and retirement solutions — and discusses how to make the most of your 401(k), workforce savings trends, financial independence and retirement income. Listen Now: Don’t miss out on future episodes: subscribe on iTunes subscribe…
We have a lot of choices about where to invest our money, both before and after retirement. Some options are clearly bad investments. Others seem like a good bet, but they probably aren’t. While we would all like to find a shortcut to massive wealth, a more steady approach is probably the best route to…
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…
Diversification should be one of your retirement mantras. After all, if you have all your eggs in one basket, they’re more likely to all break if something goes wrong. That is why you want to try to achieve the right asset allocation mix for your particular situation. Continue reading for some rules of thumb as…
Episode 45 of the NewRetirement podcast is an interview with Alan Donegan — founder of PopUp Business School and host of the Rebel Entrepreneur with ChooseFi — and discusses Donegan’s own journey to financial independence and the people that he’s met along the way. They also go in-depth on how to start a business. Spoiler:…
You worked and saved for years, and now you can sit back satisfied with a job well done. You built a network of friends and colleagues, and you may have had children who have had families of their own. Will you leave something to the ones you love? The Best Inheritance? Knowledge and Values The…
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.
Episode 44 of the NewRetirement podcast is an interview with Morgan Housel — a writer, former columnist at The Motley Fool and the Wall Street Journal, and a partner at the Collaborative Fund. He and Steve discuss Housel’s new book, The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness, and his perspective on…
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…
Understanding the difference between the future value of your money versus the present value of your money can be tricky. (Using a future value retirement calculator can make it easy though.) Once you get your head around the concepts they are pretty simple, and you’ll see why understanding this way of thinking about cash is…
Ravee Mehta made a splash in 2012 when he published The Emotionally Intelligent Investor. The premise went against everything you learned about investing in the 20th century, like reason is better than emotion and that a few basic principles should guide all investors. While you never want to make an emotional decision with regards to…
Keeping your retirement savings on track helps you meet your retirement goals. That seems like a very simple concept, and in a way it is. But living with that plan every day isn’t quite so simple. Why You Need to Save for Retirement More than 1/3 of Americans don’t have a retirement plan to speak…
As you prepare for retirement, it’s essential to understand what your taxes will be. You may think your Social Security benefits are tax-free. After all, why would the government pay you money with one hand and take it back with the other? But the truth is, you may pay taxes on your Social Security benefits…
Episode 43 of the NewRetirement podcast is an interview with Christine Benz — author and Morningstar’s director of personal finance — and discusses the big financial and life lessons Benz has picked up over her 25-year career at Morningstar. They also talk about Benz’s works, 30-Minute Money Solutions: A Step-by-Step Guide to Managing Your Finances…
With retirement, most people worry about having enough money and funding healthcare, but did you know that your heart health should really be at the top of your list of retirement concerns? Humans often worry about the wrong things. (Learn about how 16 different cognitive biases can hurt your retirement.) And there is significant evidence…
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…