Retirement Savings and Investments

If you do not know about Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs)… it may be well worth your while to learn about them. There are many compelling pros and cons of ETFs as a retirement investment. ETFs have become a very popular investment vehicle and they can be a good place for retirement savings. In a nutshell,…

When you are retired, or near retirement, it is generally a good idea to have a percentage of your savings in investment vehicles that are lower in risk.  However, it can be difficult to find low-risk, high-return investments — especially now with Certificate of Deposit (CD) and savings account rates at less than one percent.…

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…

Episode 52 of the NewRetirement podcast is an interview with Ben Carlson — Director of Institutional Asset Management at Ritholtz Wealth Management — and discusses whether we’re in a bubble, how to invest in a bubble, and Carlson’s new book, Everything You Need To Know About Saving For Retirement. Listen Now: Don’t miss out on…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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,…

Robots: They answer the phones at our insurance agencies; they build cars in our factories. And if we are lucky enough to own a Roomba-brand vacuum, they even vacuum our floors. They now can now also make personalized investment decisions for you related to your retirement. Robo-advisors are a relatively new type of online investment…

Selling bogus investment products to older Americans is big business: In June 2018, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Office of the Investor Advocate released a report on Elder Financial Exploitation. While they could not make a good estimate of total national financial costs to victims, in the state of New York, a rigorous study…

When you move from one place of employment to another, you’ll probably want to at least give some careful thought to taking the funds in your old 401(k) plan with you. In many cases, rolling them over into an IRA is the best choice. But then again, sometimes it’s better to leave your funds in…