Retirement Watch Weekly
Using Trusts to Secure Stretch IRAs
Trusts are a key part of many estate plans. You can run into trouble, however, when you try to couple a trust and an IRA. You can use a trust to make your IRA last longer and control your heirs’ access to it, but you need an experienced estate planner to navigate the minefield of […]
Retirement Delayed Five Years
That’s apparently what most Americans concluded after adding up the effects of the financial crisis. A survey by Bankers Life and Casualty found that many think they’ll delay retirement by five years after the crisis. The survey focused on middle income Baby Boomers, surveying 500 Americans ages 47 to 65 with incomes between $25,000 and […]
Seeking Help Planning Retirement Income
Employers help employees plan for and accumulate funds for retirement. Employers provide education and resources to help employees decide how much to save and how much to invest to be able to fund an attractive retirement. Yet, as employees near retirement, employers don’t have much to offer. There aren’t too many tools for planning distributions […]
Analyzing the Recession’s Effect on Retirement
A major debate among financial advisers is how badly economic and market downturns affect individual finances in the long-term. Some advisers and economists believe these events are cyclical, and that a severe downturn will be offset by an offsetting boom period at some point. In other words, most people will be able to recover what […]
Assessing Medicare Proposals
It’s no secret that the current Medicare system is unsustainable, or it shouldn’t be a secret. That’s why there are a number of proposals and laws to change the system. There’s a great deal of confusion and misinformation about the different proposals, of course. Here’s an article with an analysis of the main proposals out […]
Dangers of Following Famous Investors
A widely-promoted investment strategy is to follow what famous and successful investors are doing. There even are some academic studies indicating the strategy can work. Most of these investors don’t tell us what they’re doing while they’re doing it. But a large number of them are required to file reports with the SEC that show […]
Knowing How Much to Give Away and How to Give It to Optimize Estate Planning
Use it or lose it. That’s what many Estate Planning specialists are saying in the wake of the new estate and gift tax law enacted last December. You should act now, they say, to make large gifts and put other estate planning strategies in place. Give as much away as fast as you can. It’s […]
Finding the Bargains in Long Term Care Insurance
People who should consider buying long-term care insurance often report that they don’t because they believe it’s too expensive. LTCI is more costly than it needs to be because people make two critical mistakes when evaluating it. Avoid those mistakes, and you might find LTCI is more affordable. The first mistake is that people don’t […]
