Episode 53 of the NewRetirement podcast is an interview with Brooke Southall — Founder and Principal Reporter of RIABiz.com — and discusses the past, present and future of wealth management. Listen Now: Don’t miss out on future episodes: subscribe on iTunes subscribe on Stitcher And, join our private Facebook Group to discuss this podcast, suggest…
Early retirement is a dream for many. However, a really early retirement is fairly rare. According to research published on LIMRA, only about 20% of all Americans retire in their 50s or before — with most of those happening after age 55. For those that do retire early, figuring out how to fund expenses can…
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. Knowing how much one should save for retirement is useful — it can motivate you to take action. And…
Let’s get real about investing in real estate for retirement. Investing of any kind can be complicated at any point in your life. However, investing in or near retirement can be especially arduous. At retirement you need your assets to be relatively free of risk while keeping pace with inflation. In many cases, you need…
The Internal Revenue Service (I.R.S.) is not usually thought of as an institution that adds a lot of value to our lives — to the contrary in fact. However, a few years ago, the researchers at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College came up with a simple and relatively safe retirement withdrawals strategy…
What Is a Self-Directed IRA? A Self Directed IRA is a type Individual Retirement Account (IRA) that allows you to invest in a really wide variety of alternative investments. Traditional IRAs require that you invest in traditional asset classes — mainly stocks, bonds, funds, treasuries, annuities and certificates of deposit. Self Directed IRAs and Self…
This has been a year like no other. As you prepare to say a big buh-bye to 2020, use this list of year-end tax planning tips for 2020 and beyond to help launch you into a better future. In 2020, the rules were updated for everything from tax withholding to socializing. While we can’t help…
Joe Biden is now President elect. There are several ways a Biden presidency might affect your retirement, including lower tax benefits on 401(k) accounts and more generous Social Security benefits. Biden’s Plan for Older Americans gives specific details on what Biden would like to do as President to overhaul the nation’s retirement system, shore up…
Qualified Charitable Distributions (QCDs) are not only a way to help great causes and those in need, but they are also a way to manage your tax exposure and avoid unpleasant surprises. For people who are at least 70 ½, and who don’t need income (or who simply want to avoid the income tax) from…
You may have seen the news: Interest rates in the United States are at historic lows. That sounds great. But is it really? What are the effects of low interest rates on your retirement? Read on to see the pros and cons of low interest rates on your retirement plan. And, how to make the…
Retirement tax planning is a critical part of preparing for a secure future. The good news is that with so many possible retirement income sources, you have many different opportunities to potentially reduce your tax burden. And, you may even discover that reducing taxes can enable you to retire a little earlier than you might…
There are many guidelines around how to drawdown your savings in retirement (the 4% rule, the multiply by 25 rule), but what if you don’t have to spend your savings? You can generate retirement income with dividend stocks, and in a world where savings accounts produce less than a 1% return, dividends can provide a…
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…
Episode 47 of the NewRetirement podcast is an interview with Steve Vernon — a writer and research scholar at the Stanford Center of Longevity — and discusses the Spend Safely in Retirement Strategy that Vernon came up with and, secondly, his new book, Don’t Go Broke in Retirement. Listen Now: Don’t miss out on future…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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, and…
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…
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…