admin February 28, 2016 No Comments

5 Ways to Tell if You’re Really Ready To Retire

Think it’s about time to call it a career? Great. But before you say “Hasta la vista, baby!” to your job, I suggest you go over the five items in my Are You Really Ready To Retire? checklist.

Just to be clear: I’m not talking about “ready to retire” in the sense that you’ll flip out if you have to deal with your egomaniac of a boss one more day. I mean you’re ready in the sense of being financially, socially and emotionally prepared to make the transition to your post-career life. That’s important to know because if you exit before you’re truly prepared, you may find yourself repeating another famous Schwarzenegger line: “I’ll be back.” Read more

admin February 28, 2016 No Comments

5 “BS” Retirement Investing Pitches You Should Ignore

You’re probably already wise to many schemes designed to separate you from your money—emails from Nigerian princes, phishing scams, etc. But does your BS detector go off when confronted with slick come-ones for perfectly legal-but-dubious investments? To see, check out these five pitches that are often targeted to people investing for retirement. Read more

admin February 28, 2016 No Comments

5 Costs to Include in Your Retirement Budget

Don’t retire without a plan to pay for these expenses. Don’t forget to budget for the travel and hobbies you will finally have time for in retirement. Most people accept that retirement won’t be cheap. But just how expensive will it be?

Visions of the ideal retirement range from the extravagant pursuit of everything we have dreamed of to frugal plans calculated to stretch the buying power of our hard earned savings. Whatever course we set, we need to accurately estimate and budget for our future. While the final tab will vary depending on your lifestyle, some expenses are shared across the board and need to be budgeted for. Read more

admin February 28, 2016 No Comments

9 Signs You’re Not Saving Enough For Retirement

You might be tired of hearing it, but you know it’s true: You need to start saving for retirement now. If you start saving for retirement today instead of delaying it for a few years, you could add thousands of dollars to your retirement savings.
But perhaps you’re already setting money aside for your golden years. The only problem is you don’t know if how much you’re saving is actually enough to last you throughout retirement. If that’s the case, here are nine red flags that indicate you need to ramp up your savings efforts. Read more

admin February 26, 2016 No Comments

4% Rule? How To Draw Down Your Retirement Savings

Saving for retirement is challenging, no doubt. But if you want to know what’s really tricky, consider spending that money in retirement. Retirees in the past often relied on a simple rule for retirement income: Draw down 4 percent of your savings every year and you will be all set. But the retirement landscape has changed.
For one thing, people are living longer, and their money has to last all that time. One in four people who are 65 years old today will live to age 90, and one in 10 will live to 95.
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admin February 26, 2016 No Comments

6 Habits of Successful Retirees

Creating good, healthy habits in retirement creates a fruitful, rich and rewarding retirement.
Habits can be measured in many ways, what we eat, how often we exercise, saving money for retirement every month. However, not all habits will bring you down a path toward financial stability. Listed below are 6 habits of successful retirees that can help you with retirement:
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admin February 25, 2016 No Comments

4 Ways To Jump-Start Your Savings

Struggling to catch up? Here’s how to get your nest egg back on track

Saving for retirement is a lot like dieting. We all know what we should be doing, but actually doing it is hard. It’s much easier to make excuses.
We’re busy. We have responsibilities—to children, to older parents—that compete with our ability to set aside money for our later years. What’s more, wages have stagnated in recent years while the cost of living has continued to climb.
The numbers bear out the challenge: More than half of workers report they have less than $25,000 in total household savings and investments, excluding their home and any pension plans, according to the 2014 Retirement Confidence Survey by the Employee Benefit Research Institute. To be sure, not all of those surveyed had access to retirement plans, and some had incomes low enough to make saving difficult.
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admin December 11, 2015 No Comments

Tax-Advantaged Retirement Plan Options

When it comes to your retirement, you shouldn’t settle. Your retirement is your responsibility, and if your company’s plan is insufficient or nonexistent, you’ve got to find a way to make up for it.

Fortunately, you can solve the problem by turning to the other tax-advantaged investment options: individual retirement accounts (IRAs), SEP-IRAs or Keoghs (for the self-employed) or, in some situations, variable annuities. Here’s a breakdown of how each option works:
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admin December 11, 2015 No Comments

Married Couples & Social Security

Married couples have the most flexibility when it comes to claiming Social Security benefits. Knowing when and how to collect benefits can increase a couple’s lifetime retirement income by $100,000 or more.

admin December 11, 2015 No Comments

Pitfalls of Postponing Retirement

Thinking about working beyond normal retirement age? Think twice.

Concerned you have not saved enough for retirement? Working longer and postponing retirement may solve several concerns – employed people continue to earn income and have a longer time frame to build their nest egg; also, during the time they are working, they are not drawing down funds from that nest egg as they would if they were retired. The third advantage comes if they decide to delay collecting Social Security benefits. An individual who waits until age 70, for example, collects an extra 32% in benefits compared with someone claiming Social Security at their normal retirement age of 66. On paper, it looks like a good idea. The problem is that for many people, life doesn’t work out according to plan.