The past month has seen some wild dips in the stock markets. Nothing yet too terribly miserable for most, but enough to make us jittery. Should we be worried about a stock market correction? The easy answer is yes. After all, investing in the stock market is inherently risky and today’s world feels more unpredictable…
College costs can feel overwhelming — especially if you are trying to retire sometime soon (or even just save for a future retirement). How to fund college education is a critical question and families need to explore all of their options. You are not alone if you are worried about paying for both big expenses…
Stocks that pay dividends can be enormously appealing to retirees. But what to do with those dividends can be confusing. Should you participate in a Dividend Reinvestment Program (DRIP)? Or should you just cash the check? Before answering that question, let’s learn a little more about dividends. What is a Stock Dividend? Different companies offer…
Episode 16 of the NewRetirement podcast is an interview with Michael Batnick — Director of Research at Ritholtz Wealth Management LLC and author of Big Mistakes. We discuss what we can learn from the biggest mistakes of legendary investors, his long and winding path to his calling and what he’s learned along the way building…
Is the retirement crisis real? Whether or not you yourself are suffering, financial anxiety is acutely felt by many Americans. Research from the Employee Benefit Research Institute (ERBI) finds that the median retirement account balance for households led by someone between the ages of 55 and 64 is a mere $14,500. If you have more…
Inflation is a dirty word when it comes to retirement finances. We have been lucky for a while. Over the last four decades the United States has enjoyed record low inflation rates. That might be changing and you may want to consider ways to protect your retirement from inflation — rising inflation. Is Inflation Coming?…
Doing a Roth conversion — also known as a “backdoor Roth IRA” — is perhaps even more appealing in 2018 than ever before. Why? Low 2018 tax rates. What is a Roth Conversion? Backdoor IRA? A Roth Conversion is when you convert money that you have in a traditional IRA to a Roth IRA. This…
The stock market is enjoying a crazy long record setting expansion. By some measures, this is the longest bull market in the history of the United States. If this fact makes you nervous, you are not alone. No one wants their retirement savings at risk. So, Will the Stock Market Crash? Ha. Thought you’d get…
Episode 14 of the NewRetirement podcast is an interview with Jim O’Shaughnessy – founder of O’Shaughnessy Asset Management. We discuss the investing lessons he’s learned from 30 years of investing – partially summarized in this tweet storm and why human behavior is the most predictable (and exploitable) element of the stock market. Listen Now: Don’t…
An Investment Policy Statement (IPS) is a document that is usually drafted by a financial advisor for their client. An IPS is meant to define: Investment goals Strategies for achieving those objectives A framework for making intelligent changes to your plan Options for what to do if things don’t go as expected Keep your 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. Wikipedia lists 185 different kinds of cognitive biases. While they are all probably somewhat damaging…
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…
Episode 11 of the NewRetirement podcast is an interview with Nobel Prize winner Robert Merton. Professor Robert Merton is a globally recognized economist and expert on life cycle and retirement finance (among other things). We discuss what’s wrong with the current focus on just building assets and why we should focus on retirement income instead.…
Episode 7 of the NewRetirement podcast is an interview with Allan Roth — a highly in demand, by-the-hour financial advisor with over 25 years of experience in the field. He also runs Wealth Logic. Allan and Steve discuss how (and why) most people can do much better financially by keeping investments simple and managing expenses.…
When we reach a certain age we must — in order to avoid tax penalties — take Required Minimum Distributions from IRAs, 401ks and other types of tax advantaged accounts (all retirement accounts funded with pre-tax contributions). Until recently, the age was 70.5. It is now 72 unless you turned 70.5 before the end of 2019.…
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…
Episode 5 is an interview with personal finance and investing legend Bill Bernstein. Steve and Bill discuss the hurdles between you and a secure retirement and how to overcome them. Hosted by Steve Chen, founder of NewRetirement, the NewRetirement Podcast offers interviews about the wise use of both money and time in retirement. We explore…
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 use our time to the fullest, allow us to spend precious moments with the people we love, enable us to focus on those things that make us happy.…
If you do not entirely know what is an Exchange Traded Fund (ETF)… it may be well worth your while to find out. ETFs have become very popular investment vehicles and they can be a good place for retirement savings. In a nutshell, ETFs can be a low cost way to insure adequate diversification for…
Bond, James Bond. The mere mention of the name makes you think of cool confidence and absolute competence. Wouldn’t you like to feel that way about your retirement investments? You perhaps can, assuming you can figure out the best asset allocation strategy for your retirement. What Exactly is Asset Allocation Anyway? Asset allocation refers to…
Bonds can be a core low risk component of retirement portfolios, but 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. First things first, what is a bond? A…
Last week it was broadly reported that the credit reporting agency Equifax suffered a major cybersecurity breach that put us all at a greater risk of financial fraud. Experts estimate that hackers stole the data — Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses, driver’s license numbers, credit card information and more — of 143 million people.…
If index fund investing is good enough for the most famously successful American investor, then maybe it should be good enough for your retirement. Warren Buffet, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, one of the richest men and most successful investors in the world, recommends that people buy index funds. He often touts index funds in his…
There are two kinds of people: those who follow the rules and those who believe rules are made to be broken. If you fall into the first camp, the following list may cause you a bit of anxiety. Personal finance is full of rules. While some are helpful, others can work against you if they…
Here is a guide for how to find lost money — a lost 401k or other unclaimed retirement benefits. The Big Takeaways… Each year, it’s estimated that more than 900,000 401(k) accounts go unclaimed, in addition to $300M in unclaimed pensions. The simplest ways to find your lost 401(k) is by contacting your previous employer,…