If you are one of the fortunate few who have a defined benefit retirement plan, you have more predictability in your retirement income than most. You can calculate your combined pension benefits and any Social Security benefits that you have earned and have a clear idea of your annual income throughout retirement – assuming you
Retirement
Did you realize that not all financial advisors are obligated to act in your best interest? Financial professionals are obligated to offer products and advice that are suitable for your needs, but not all of them are obligated to offer the best advice possible.
Two standards govern financial advisors – the fiduciary standard and the
How much longer would you have to work beyond your full retirement age to equal an additional 1% retirement savings over the thirty years prior to your retirement? You might expect to work an extra year or two – but according to a recent study published in the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), you
Retirement has finally arrived. You’re ready to start drawing on your retirement income sources. Enjoy this new phase of your life.
Unfortunately, you haven’t been able to retire from taxes – and your taxes will enter a new phase as well. You don’t have an employer to hold out taxes on your salary anymore. You’re
Do you plan to relocate when you retire? If so, where would you like to go?
It’s easy to rattle off a favorite vacation destination as your preferred retirement location, but it’s far different when you are visiting a location instead of living there. Try keeping an open mind and evaluating multiple retirement locations and
Does your IRA or 401(k) contain mostly actively managed funds or index funds? Do you know the difference between those two funds? Do you even know what’s in your IRA or 401(k) at all? If any of those three questions give you pause, it’s probably time to review your retirement account and think about whether
By Eric Olsen, Executive Director HELPS Nonprofit Law Firm
Affordable transportation is often a concern for senior citizens. Some seniors go without basics to make car payments they can’t afford for a car with little or no equity. Others need affordable replacement transportation but don’t have the income to finance a car. What are
Let’s say you’re tempted to make a withdrawal from your 401(k) plan to pay off some debts. You can always catch up by paying that money back into your retirement savings later, right? Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. Don’t rob your future to pay for your past! Watch Bankrate.com Senior VP and Chief Analyst
It takes solid planning and fiscal discipline during your working years to enjoy a financially comfortable retirement. But how can you properly plan if you don’t really understand how to manage your money to maximize retirement benefits? Even if you pay a financial advisor to assist, in the end, the decisions are still yours to
How’s your retirement plan holding up? If you are a woman, you’re probably having more difficulty with retirement plans than your male counterparts.
Despite advances, women still face lower average salaries – 82% of the average man’s salary, according to the Pew Research Center. Fewer working years on average, often due to time off for
Are you counting on Social Security for most of your retirement funds – and if so, how comfortable are you that the funds will be there at retirement? According to the recent Transamerica Retirement Survey of Workers, you probably aren’t comfortable at all.
A surprising 76% of survey respondents are concerned that Social Security won’t
Are you planning to work in retirement? If so, is it because you need money? The recent American Working Conditions Survey (AWCS) from the Rand Corporation think tank suggests another reason – you want to be there.
A Rand brief on the AWCS survey compared working conditions and expectations of older workers (age 50+) to
Women often face greater financial challenges than men in retirement. Lower average salaries and fewer working years make it difficult for women to achieve suitable nest eggs. Results from the recent Transamerica Retirement Survey of American Workers highlight the anxieties that women face.
Sadly, only 12% of women are “very confident” in expecting a comfortable
Who’s thinking about retirement when they’re young? Retirement accounts are typically not a priority for young workers – but they should be. That’s precisely the time to take the greatest advantage of compounding interest by contributing as much as your fledgling budget can afford.
A new study from the University of Missouri suggests that millennials,
Let’s face it: Americans are woefully unprepared for retirement. Surveys consistently tell us that far too many workers have insufficient retirement funds or even absolutely nothing saved for retirement at all. Sadly, these workers will be too dependent on Social Security benefits to have a comfortable retirement.
Many of these workers will claim benefits before
Confidence Without Reason Is the rising stock market giving workers confidence that they will have enough money to live comfortably in their retirement years?
The 28th Annual Retirement Confidence Survey conducted by the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) shows a slight increase in the number of respondents that are very confident or somewhat confident in
Who would turn down free money? According to the Motley Fool, approximately 20% of workers with matching 401(k) retirement plans are effectively dismissing free money by making a significant mistake with their contributions.
Approximately three-quarters of companies with 401(k) plans offer a matching program where the employer contributes an equal amount to the employee’s contribution
How’s your 401(k) or IRA doing? A typical 401(k) plan returns from 5% to 8% based on a portfolio of 60% stocks and 40% bonds and other conservative investments. If your retirement plan is not meeting expectations, you may be tempted by the high returns of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin – but should you be wary
What happens to your employer-based 401(k) account when you leave a job? That’s for you to decide – and if you make no decision, you may end up losing hard-earned benefits.
A recent study by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that over the ten-year period from the beginning of 2004 through 2013, more than
By Eric Olsen Executive Director, HELPS Nonprofit Law Firm
According to the Kaiser Foundation, almost half (21 million) of American seniors have incomes below 200% of the poverty line. Many have debt they can’t afford to pay. When debt is not paid, collectors call, send demand letters, and sometimes file a lawsuit. Being served legal
America’s collective readiness for retirement is improving, according to Fidelity’s latest Retirement Savings Assessment study. The study distills America’s retirement readiness into a single score representing the percentage of estimated retirement income that the average saver will require.
According to the current study, America’s combined retirement score is 80 – meaning that the average American
How many times in life do you have to worry about removing too little money from a financial account? Before retirement, there are few such concerns – but, for most retirement plans, once you reach age 70½, you must take a required minimum distribution (RMD) every year from your plan. (Roth IRAs are excluded –
Should you invest in a Roth IRA instead of a traditional IRA? If you have earned income for the year, your modified adjusted gross income (MAGI) is less than $135,000 as a single filer and $199,000 for married filing jointly, a Roth IRA is a valid option for you.
If your MAGI is less than
Contributing to a retirement account can be difficult for lower income households, but one can argue that it is even more important for those families to take advantage of all the retirement savings options that are possible. One of the lesser-known options applies directly to lower-income families – the credit for qualified retirement savings contributions,
If you have planned properly, retirement can open up a wide set of new possibilities. You can take up new pastimes, travel to foreign lands – and perhaps even retire there. There are many countries with reasonable costs of living, expat communities that would be happy to welcome you, and friendly locals if you want
The average retirement age in the United States has ticked up over the past decade. As you can see in the chart below, as of 2014, the average retirement age increased to 62 and the expected age of retirement is now at 66.
If you look at the state of retirement savings these days, the
In many facets of life, experience is the best instructor. So, MoneyTips asked retirees for advice to give to people planning their future retirement.
In an exclusive MoneyTips online survey, we asked 258 retirees:
From the choices provided them, the most popular answer was “Start planning today” (36.8%), followed by “Save more than you think
Retiring without the worry of running out of money is a major goal for many of us. But what is the best way to ensure that you never run out of money in retirement?
It used to be that many retirees lived off of a pension, interest income, Social Security, or all three. This made
You Can’t Decide Without Facts When should you claim your Social Security benefits? Should you claim them on your own work record or on your spouse’s work record? Those relatively simple questions can become very complex in certain cases.
Fortunately, there are Social Security Administration (SSA) offices throughout the nation with staff waiting to help.
Early retirement sounds delightful. Who wouldn’t want to give up their desk for a deck chair, 9-to-5 for a 9-iron, or board meetings for surfboards and snowboards? According to our recent survey, many people are retiring earlier than they planned. However, this often results in less savings than intended to be spent over a longer