Annuities have a great allure, furnishing you income in retirement. But there are annuities and there are annuities. And they are dauntingly complex. One very smart advisor who can untangle them is Jeff Rose, CFP, the founder of Alliance Wealth Management in Carbondale, Ill His take: Annuities, like any other investment, make perfect sense in the right situation. In the wrong situation, they can cost you money – and even be dangerous. Read more
Retirement Strategy : A Personal Account
A friend recently told me he’s planning to retire but is worried about his financial ability to do so. When he described his situation, I told him it seemed to me he didn’t have anything to worry about. But, still he’s worried. As luck would have it, I heard a finance professor lecture on retirement income planning the following day. He suggested a strategy that might just help put my friend’s mind at ease. I then also read an article in the Harvard Business Review by Nobel laureate economist Robert Merton touting the same idea. It’s not a cure-all, a panacea or magical solution. As a financial whiz-kid once reminded me, “No financial product has a ‘secret sauce’.”
The concept: use annuities as a key element in your retirement income strategy. Read more
2016’s Best and Worst States To Retire
Brought to you by Wallethub.com
Based on affordability, health factors, such as hospital rankings, number of physicians and quality of life.
Retirement might be the end of the line, but it doesn’t have to be the end of financial security or life satisfaction. For many of us, our primary concern with retirement is timing, which often coincides with the age at which we become eligible to receive Social Security or pension benefits. Hopefully the choice will be ours and not dictated by our circumstances — the unfortunate case for nearly a third of nonretirees who haven’t put away a single penny for retirement, though not necessarily through any fault of their own. Read more
How much do you really need for retirement?
It’s the age-old question: How much should I save for retirement?
For years, financial advisors recommended people save at least $1 million to enjoy a comfortable retirement. But given longer lifespans and concerns about the financial status of Social Security, is that target enough to fund a potentially decades-long retirement?
Maybe not. Read more
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
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
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
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
8 Essential Annuity Questions – You Need to Know!
Understanding Annuities and what part they play is critical in making sure you are getting the most out of your retirement planning. We have listed 8 crucial questions you need to know to ensure your annuity works hard for you.
Answering these questions could put you on the path to finding the right annuity and help you secure the future you dreamed of. They come in 3 categories so you can zero in on strategies for you and your situation.
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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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