Retirement Watch Weekly
Giving the Best Estate Planning Financial Advice to Grandkids
The best thing you can do to ensure the financial security of your grandkids isn’t to give them money or wealth, though that would be helpful. Sound advice based on the latest research is what the younger generations need more of, and they aren’t likely to get that advice from their parents or schools. The […]
Avoiding the Nation’s Silent Scam
About the middle of last year we became aware of a scam that’s been stealing money from Americans for a number of years. Law enforcement at different levels apparently has been aware of it for some time but has been unable or unwilling to do anything about it. The amounts stolen from each person are […]
Estate Planning with Roth IRAs
An IRA, especially a Roth IRA, is valuable for more than your retirement planning. Your estate plan can be much better when a Roth IRA is shrewdly used. Instead of looking at the front-end tax benefits and costs, take the long-term view. While converting a traditional IRA to a Roth can save estate taxes, Roth […]
More Confidence About Retirement, But Why?
Americans are feeling a bit more confident about their prospects for a financially secure retirement, according to the annual Retirement Confidence Survey from the Employee Benefit Research Institute. Americans on the whole still aren’t confident about retirement, and those with confidence still are much lower than at the peak before the 2008 crisis. Confidence seems […]
The Coming Medicare Advantage Cuts
Government policy for several years has been to reduce the reimbursements paid to insurers who offer Medicare Advantage plans. The plans have become very popular, now enrolling 38% of Medicare beneficiaries, according to some estimates. But the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid announced recently that the reimbursements are likely to be reduced again for 2015. […]
More on the 10,000 Hour Debate
First a review. In 2008 author Malcolm Gladwell popularized the notion, taken from an academic paper, that the key to success was practicing 10,000 hours at something. It spurred a lot of controversy and discussion, a lot of it in the last six months or so. Here’s the latest. It’s from another paper that criticizes […]
Avoiding Social Security Mistakes
We write in Retirement Watch a lot about strategies for claiming Social Security retirement benefits. That’s because you have choices, and married couples have a lot of choices. The difference between the optimum choice and other choices can amount to tens of thousands of dollar or more over your lifetime. Unfortunately, people make a lot […]
Cautions for Bond Buyers
One of my longstanding investment rules is that investors who want to buy individual bonds (instead of bond funds) should buy only treasury bonds and only newly-issued bonds. You also can consider buying tax-exempt bonds if they are new issues. The reason for this recommendation is that the market for individual bonds isn’t nearly as […]
