When you work hard your entire life, you deserve a relaxing, stress-free retirement as your personal reward. But a few seemingly innocent mistakes on your part could have the opposite result, leaving you overwhelmingly unhappy during your senior years. Here are a few blunders that are more significant than you might realize. 1. Relying on […]
Fueled by the news of ballooning student loans and pernicious credit card debt, a small but growing group of Americans are taking control of their money. Part of the financial independence, retire early or FIRE movement, they are committed to saving money from their corporate jobs… and even taking on side hustles to build additional […]
Social Security benefits can potentially make or break your retirement, especially if your savings are slim. The median amount baby boomers have saved for retirement is just $152,000, according to a report from the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies. Although that may sound like a good chunk of change, when you’re spending tens of thousands […]
One wonderful thing about my job — and there are many wonderful things — is that people are willing to spend the time to educate me and my colleagues about products not currently on our radar. Our most recent visitor was focused on health savings accounts (HSA), which allow people covered by high-deductible health insurance […]
No doubt you’ve heard the phrase “dying of a lonely heart.” It’s true, many people do. In fact, here’s a staggering finding: In terms of dying early, being lonely is worse—two times worse, in fact, than being obese. That’s how unhealthy being lonely can be. That’s according to researchers from the University of Chicago, who […]
After years of planning and saving, it’s finally here: your retirement. If you’ve achieved financial freedom and can afford to stop working full time this year, congratulations! Retirement planning was no easy task. Now, it’s time to transition from preparing for retirement to being retired. If you’re planning to retire later this year, you should […]
Retirement accounts give you some pretty awesome tax breaks, but they come with a catch. When you put the money in your account, you’re agreeing that you won’t take it out again until you’re at least 59 1/2. If you withdraw funds from your retirement accounts early, you usually pay a 10% early withdrawal penalty, […]
The annual income of older Americans could drop significantly from one year to the next for a variety of reasons. It might be retirement or the death of a spouse, perhaps, or the sale of a business. Yet it might take Medicare — which charges higher earners more for premiums — a couple years to […]
Many financial experts believe a recession is coming soon. While it’s impossible to predict when or if an economic downturn will hit, it’s certain that one will arrive eventually since every economy goes through boom and bust cycles. Since no one knows when the economy will go south, the best thing to do is to […]
You may have heard that you need to save $1 million over the course of your lifetime to retire comfortably. But it can be confusing to know how much that means you need to be saving right now. Financial analysts at Blacktower Financial Management Group did the math for you, and it turns out that you can probably squeak […]
Everyone needs to save. In fact, you should be setting aside cash for retirement and other financial goals. Whether you want to buy a house, go on vacation without going into debt, or make some other big purchase, saving is the smartest way to do it. Unfortunately, while most of us know this, we also […]
It goes without saying that death and taxes are two of life’s certainties. But what many people don’t know is that their Social Security retirement benefits might be taxed. And that means that they haven’t been using strategies proactively to reduce those levies and extend their income over their retirement years. William Meyer, founder of […]
