The Complete Guide to Reverse Mortgage Interest Rates and Fees
This is the most complete online guide to all of the costs associated with reverse mortgages including reverse mortgage interest rates.
Latest Posts
Is a Bond Ladder Strategy Right for Your Retirement?
Bonds can be a core, low-risk component of retirement portfolios. However, they do come with one significant risk factor: If interest rates go up, the bonds you already own will plummet in value. A bond ladder strategy can be a way to reduce that particular risk. What Is a Bond? A bond is a fairly…
28 Keys to Building Wealth (Even Building Wealth After 50)
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 Guide to Developing a Retirement Withdrawals Strategy
You’ve spent your entire working career saving and investing for retirement. Now it’s time to develop a retirement withdrawals strategy. When you are thinking about withdrawing money from your retirement accounts, it’s important to come up with a strategy that ensures that your savings are going to last for a lifetime, are used efficiently,…
Social Security and Working: Everything You Need to Know
Social Security and working: believe it or not, the two are more or less completely compatible with each other. You can absolutely get Social Security retirement benefits and work at the same time. However, there are a few things that you do need to know. Social Security Work Penalties Determined by Your Age There are…
Behavioral Finance: 16 Ways to Outsmart Your Brain for More Wealth and a Better Retirement
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…
Life Expectancy by County: WHERE You Live May Suggest HOW LONG You Live
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?
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…
6 Meaningful Ways to Leave a Financial Legacy to Your Heirs
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…
Should You Use a Financial Advisor Affiliated With Your Bank?
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: What Will You Pay to Use a Financial Advisor
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…
Should You Meet With a Financial Planner and What Should You Discuss?
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…
10 Retirement Investments That Don’t Involve Stocks, Bonds, or Other Financial Products
Investing in ourselves doesn’t need to involve money. In fact, many of the best retirement investments do not involve greenbacks at all. Instead, they are investments that make the fullest use of our time, allow us to spend precious moments with the people we love, and enable us to focus on those things that make…
The Secret to a Happy Retirement? A Schedule!
Before retirement, life has a predictable routine. Work takes priority, and oftentimes everything else is scheduled around it. From laundry to mowing the lawn, many people plan and keep a routine so that everything gets done. After retirement, there’s nothing but time! So, it might seem that schedules aren’t crucial. But a routine might be…
How to Make Money in Retirement: 14 Real and Really Easy Ways to Boost Income
Regardless of where you are in life, it’s always nice to make some extra money. And that is especially true in retirement. But, how to make money in retirement when you’re supposed to be simply enjoying the easy life? The retirement gigs listed below won’t be quite enough to cover retirement expenses, but they won’t…
Home-Sharing: The Golden Age of Golden Girl-Style Retirement Living for Baby Boomers
It has been nearly 30 years since the hit television sitcom starred in living rooms across the nation. However, we may be just reaching the golden age of the Golden Girls. While their arrangement may have seemed unusual at the time, four adult women sharing an apartment may not be that far-fetched. In fact, many…
Ask Yourself These 3 Questions to Find Out Your Retirement Readiness
While financial and health concerns are a major part of every person’s retirement decision, it’s important to ask yourself questions that go beyond financial preparedness to help determine at what age retirement is right for you. Americans are living longer than ever. This means that many individuals will actually spend more years in retirement than…
By the Numbers: 11 Figures You Need to Know for a Secure Retirement
Figuring out if you can retire securely can sometimes feel like the most complicated word problem ever. Just figuring out which retirement number to worry about can be perplexing. And then there is the further complication of knowing how they all fit together. Here is your guide to the 11 retirement numbers that are most…
Pros and Cons of a Target-Date Fund
A retirement target-date fund is a professionally-managed mutual fund that is strategically reallocated over time to achieve both growth and security for your assets. The key goal for a target-date fund is that your money will be available for withdrawal on a targeted retirement date in the future. When you invest in a target-date fund,…
Focus on How Much Will You Spend in Retirement
You may be worried that you have not saved enough for retirement. And the first piece of advice from most financial experts is to tell you to save more! However, there is something much more effective you can do to make sure that you have enough money to live on in retirement.For a secure retirement,…
4 Ways to Help Your Grandchildren Financially
Once you have solidified your own retirement plan and have saved enough, you may find yourself wanting to help your grandchildren. You might want to lessen their financial burden by paying for their college or reward them for meeting various goals. 1. Gifting Giving money is one way to help your grandchildren. If you are…
Preparing for Retirement: 7 Secret Training Tips for a Successful Future
When you hear the phrase “preparing for retirement,” you probably think about savings and budgeting. However, your finances are just one aspect that you need to consider. Sure, you need to have your financial situation in check when you retire, but other aspects of your life could use some prepping as well. Here are seven…
Boomers Have a Retirement Problem: Boomerang Kids
Baby boomers who are still financially supporting their adult children (a group that is sometimes referred to as “boomerang kids”) are increasingly finding that doing so is keeping them from reaching retirement, a study shows. In fact, only 21% of baby boomers who support their adult children are retired–compared with 52% of baby boomer households…
The Actual Costs of Long-Term Health Care
They say that what you don’t know won’t kill you.However, if you are misinformed about the costs of long term health care in retirement, you might not be able to afford the kind of care you would like to have when fighting to stay alive. When saving for retirement, it’s vital to focus on the…
Expert Interview Series: The Advantages of Cohousing
Have you ever heard the term “cohousing” and wondered what it means? If you’re preparing for retirement, or if you’re just looking for a change of scenery, cohousing might be right up your alley. And you might even be able to make new friends in the process. For more information about the advantages of cohousing,…