“Owning a home is wonderful, but don’t bank on real estate as your chief retirement investment,” advises the author of today’s article, which looks at the reality when it comes to looking to real estate as a source of retirement riches. What’s the problem with banking on homes for retirement income – especially given the fact that many people have…
The Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act – or SECURE Act – has been overwhelmingly approved by the U.S. House of Representatives as a purported means of improving retirement savings options. In today’s article, a financial planner with 20 years of experience looks at how the SECURE Act, which, among other things, raises the age for required withdrawals…
New research from well-known, Boston-based money management firm GMO has an important warning for retirement savers of all ages when it comes to their glide paths (the gradual reduction in one’s allocation to equities as they get closer to – and then enter –retirement). As today’s article outlines, the research indicates that “No matter how young you are, chances are…
Robots and a smart fridge keeping you from having to go into a nursing home. Some new (and simple) math for retirement saving. New alternatives to purchasing long-term care insurance. The retirement community of the future. There are among what may be the best new ideas in retirement as, thanks to increasing longevity and the changing nature of work, traditional…
When it comes to retirement versus financial independence, the author of today’s article sees “both as interchangeable, because in essence, in both cases folks are having the financial flexibility to live life to their own terms, not being chained to a desk or a job they may dislike. In both situations, you have the option to leave one endeavor and…
It’s an important decision with potentially major consequences: how much do you take out of your portfolio each year when you retire. Take out too much and you risk running out of money down the line; take out too little and you are foregoing a better retirement lifestyle and experiences. In today’s article, the author runs some hypothetical numbers illustrating…
A critical part of retirement planning is figuring out how much you will need to have accumulated to fund your golden years – and one common approach to calculating this figure is to use a multiple of your ending salary. Fidelity, for example, recommends retirement savers have 10 times their ending salary saved by age 67. And while different entities…
When it comes to investing according to environmental, social, or corporate governance (ESG) standards, today’s article notes that “While returns can vary from year to year, ethical investors tend to perform better than investors who don’t use social or “sustainable” principles.” Thus, it is possible to generate good returns in your retirement portfolio while doing good with your retirement portfolio.…
The author of today’s article likens them to an “elite Navy SEALs team of retirement savers”: those with $1 million or more in their 401(k). And after membership in this elite group decreased in the final months of last year as volatility in the stock market took its toll, the number of 401(k) millionaires ticked back up in the first…
“Let me put it this way: you wouldn’t not take your mortgage interest deduction because… you didn’t feel like it? Or it was hard?” points out the author of today’s article. And yet a surprisingly large number of Americans are not taking advantage of major tax breaks available to them – including what the author refers to as “The one…