Retirement Watch Weekly
Planning 2015-2016 With Your 2014 Tax Return
Don’t close your 2014 income tax return files just yet. You should use that tax return to plan for the rest of this year and next year. Tax planning should be a year-round activity these days, and last year’s tax return is the best place to start. The federal income tax return also is one […]
March 2015
March 27, 2015 05:25 p.m. Your Retirement Finance Week in Review I’m going to be in Stamford, Connecticut making two free presentations on April 22. One presentation will be at 10:00 a.m. and the other will be at 5:30 p.m. The topic at each will be Retirement Planning: How to Create and Implement a Successful […]
What You Need to Know About Trusts for Your Estate Planning
You probably need at least one trust in your Estate Planning setup. It seems almost all estate planning has one these days. Many problems can be solved and goals achieved with the right trust. Trusts no longer are restricted to the very wealthy. Too many people are intimidated by talk of trusts. You don’t learn […]
Separating the Myths, Facts of Long-Term Care
Long-term care is a great American paradox. On the one hand, most people don’t want to talk about it. A recent survey found that 25% of adults would rather go to the dentist than discuss LTC. Fewer than 30% of adults have had a conversation about long-term care planning. Yet, paying for LTC and the […]
Navigating the RMD Minefield
IRAs seem simple at first. You make contributions and manage the investments. Over time, however, IRAs become more complicated and even inconvenient. IRAs become especially troublesome for people as they begin to take distributions and especially after they reach age 70½ and beyond, because of the required minimum distributions. The RMD rules are not what […]
How the Fed Distorts the Stock Market, and Why You Should Beware
The Fed’s easy money and low interest rate policies might have saved the economy from severe depression since 2008. But it definitely has had other effects. One effect is to distort investment markets, especially the stock market. If you’ve been following headlines, you’ve seen that few active mutual fund managers have beaten the stock indexes […]
Money Lessons for Children
Ron Leiber of The New York Times wrote a book about how not to raise spoiled children. You can read a review and summary of the book here, including the seven important lessons from the book. He advocates supplying an allowance independent of chores because, he writes, children “ought to do [chores] for the same […]
How Medicare Distorts Medical Care
The Wall Street Journal has been doing a series in which it digs into Medicare billing data to find interesting things about how medical providers react to the incentives in the payment system. The latest report (subscription might be required) found that patients who received care at long-term acute hospitals tend to be discharged exactly […]
