Less than 10% of employee-sponsored retirement plans offer an annuity option, although this may change with new federal legislation about to be passed. There is much debate about whether it is a good idea to put some or all of your retirement savings into an annuity, and there are arguments for this on both sides. […]
Many younger people now believe that they don’t need to worry about retirement, since it won’t matter with the apocalypse coming. This gives us some real insight into how they think. It’s hard enough to get young people to save for anything, let alone retirement. They really don’t need much of an excuse not to […]
Just about everyone believes that as we get nearer to retirement, and especially after retirement, we should be more conservative with our investing. Is this the right approach? There are good reasons behind our recommending that people be more aggressive with their investments early in life and more conservative as time goes on, and this […]
While financial advisors always have told us to wait until age 70 to collect Social Security benefits, the changing landscape of Social Security should have us rethinking this. Whenever we’ve done the math on the comparative benefits between taking Social Security earlier or later, later has always won out, provided that we at least expect […]
While many of us work away at putting money away for retirement, we do so without a real sense of what we will need. When we look at how we are doing, the numbers are terrible. It is no secret that Americans really don’t put as much into their retirement as they should. Perhaps we […]
People just don’t save enough for retirement generally, and some of this has to do with their lack of consideration. We should help them connect the dots to the future better. It’s not really that easy for people to properly decide between present and future value when it comes to making decisions on how much […]
Forced to decide between funding their pension plans and other government spending, U.S. states have chosen to neglect their pension liabilities. The problem is growing larger. Governments, by nature it seems, spend quite a bit more than they take in. We could even say that this is the nature of democratic governments, where parties compete […]
Previous generations used to steer well clear of debt in retirement. Nowadays, this has become a more viable option, thanks to the benefits of employer matched contributions. The number of retirees who bring debt into their retirement is on the increase. There are several factors that are behind this, starting with the historically low interest […]
Parents are spending more than ever on their adult kids, with the total now at $500 billion a year. It’s nice to be able to do this, but we need to consider ourselves too. One of the trends that is emerging over the last few years is the amount of money that American parents spend […]
Divorce rates may be going down, but they are going up a lot among those 50 or older. This is a time in our lives where we are particularly exposed to the financial risk of divorce. We would think that couples who make it to age 50 and beyond certainly should be less prone to […]