Retirement Watch Weekly
Determining the Best Age to Buy Long-Term Care Insurance
What’s the best age to buy long-term care insurance? I hear that question a lot. Let’s run through the factors. Most people are considering the lifetime trade off between the premiums paid and the benefits eventually received. They want coverage but they don’t want to begin paying premiums too long before care is needed. For […]
Avoiding Frequent IRA Rollover Mistakes
IRA rollovers at first seem commonplace and easy. There even are television commercials about them. Yet, there is a lot more to rollovers than many people realize. When you don’t know the details, you risk losing money to taxes, penalties, and bad decisions. There are 31 different types of rollovers in the tax code, says […]
How to Minimize Taxes on Annuity Payouts
Annuities offer several benefits when you begin receiving distributions. You receive guaranteed income that lasts for life, no matter how long you live. The insurance company takes on the risks of low investment returns and a long life. You don’t have to worry about scheduling distributions or deciding which assets to sell to raise cash. […]
May 2015
May 29, 2015 04:15 p.m. Your Retirement Finance Week in Review There wasn’t a lot of news in this holiday-shortened week. It is a good time to review some remarks Jeffrey Gundlach of DoubleLine Funds made in his May 12 conference call. Gundlach said most of the analysts who appear in the financial media, especially […]
Getting Longevity Right
Underestimating longevity is one of the most common and costly retirement planning mistakes. People consistently underestimate how long they are likely to live. Your plans should have a realistic estimate of life expectancy. You should be conservative, meaning have a bias in favor of a longer life span. The Life Expectancy tables from the Society […]
Buildng the Complete Estate Planning Strategy
Many people think they have estate planing strategies but really don’t. I’m not talking about the many people who haven’t done any estate planning and don’t have even a basic will. I’m talking about people who have taken action on their estate planning and yet have plans that are woefully incomplete. There is more to […]
How “Livable” Is Your Community?
The AARP, through its Public Policy Institute, issued an online tool called the Livability Index. Plug in the name of your community, or one you are considering moving to, and you’ll see a numerical score and a showing of where the community ranks on the AARP scale. You also can see the different categories used […]
The Dark Side of Art Collecting
Bloomberg.com’s been running a series of articles on different aspects of the art collecting market. The latest installment shows the dangers of art collecting, especially for those who engage in private market transactions and rely on brokers and agents for their information. In this installment, a Russian billionaire decides that his dealer was overstating the […]
