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My Comments: Ignore this financial planning device at your peril. Years before my retirement days arrived, I wrongly assumed my taxes during retirement would be relatively insignificant. Unless you have virtually no income, your income taxes will be a drain on your ability to maintain your lifestyle. If I had to do it over again, …
Continue reading What You Need To Know In 2021 About The Roth IRA
My Comments: The following thoughts from Tim Maurer resonate with me, both personally, as I am more or less retired, and because from time to time over the years, I’ve had similar conversations with clients. There’s no easy answer. As I’m also my own client now, what steps should I take to preserve my assets? …
Continue reading Should I Take My Investment Gains Off the Table?
My Comments: Retirement isn’t easy for anyone without enough money to sustain themselves. And how much you need to stay alive depends on where you live, how much you like to spend, or simply maintain the standard of living you enjoyed before retirement. The planning for this phase of your life also has to assume …
Continue reading 3 Great Retirement Funds (Yielding Up To 11%) Hiding in Plain Sight
My Comments: I survived the crash in 1987, the one in 2000, and was hurt by the crash in 2008-09. The last one because I was older, semi-retired, and without the ability to ride it out until the inevitable recovery. That we’ll have another crash is inevitable. The huge question is when will it happen …
Continue reading The Fed May Be Saying It’s Time To Dump Stocks
My Comments: I tend to be an optimist, since pessimism seems too often a self-fulfilling prophecy. But there’s a lot to be pessimistic about these days. The future looks cloudy. On the other hand, I ask you to take yourself back to 1921 or even further to 1821 and try and see yourself as a …
My Comments: All of us have visions of our retirement at some point in time. Then it arrives and our ability to correct planning mistakes are behind us. The calendar is locked in stone and there’s no way to go back in time and change things. So if you want a retirement as successful as …
Continue reading 22 Million Seniors Wish They’d Considered This Major Retirement Expense
My Comments: Given our inability to accurately predict the future, it’s very difficult for most people to effectively plan for an event that will happen years into the future. Assuming we live long enough, however, the odds of that event appearing in front of us are very high. I’m talking about a point in time …
Continue reading Should You Get a Roth or Traditional IRA? Here’s How to Decide
My Comments: My wife and I are now far past the traditional retirement age. She, however, continues to run the household with few changes from how she’s done it for over 50 years. Despite a recently fractured hip, she’s making every effort to keep it all going. I, on the other hand, have slowed …
Continue reading An Uncomfortable Truth About Aging and Retirement Planning
My Comments: For most people, monthly benefits from Social Security are a critical element of one’s financial life in retirement. While started in the 1930’s to allow poor people to avoid destitution, it’s evolved to where today it’s critical for many millions of not so poor people. While we can argue it’s a drain on …
Continue reading Don’t Claim Social Security Benefits Until You Can Answer These 3 Questions
My Comments: The filibuster is confusing. Not only how it's applied, but the rationale for its existence and whether it should be eliminated. These words from Noah Bookbinder have helped me understand the dynamics involved and the potential threats to democracy it poses if left to stand as it does today. by Noah Bookbinder \ …
Continue reading I’m done with the Senate filibuster. We’re running out of time to save democracy.
