Category: Financial and taxes in retirement
September 22, 2014 -- Just about everybody we know still has the same recurring college-days nightmare: the final is tomorrow, and somehow you managed to overlook going to class all semester. You have no notes, know nothing, and doom is imminent. Well add to that one more, real life nightmare - your unpaid college loans.
The GAO analyzed data from the Survey of Consumer Finances and found that about
3 percent of households headed by those aged 65 or older — about 706,000 households — carry student loan debt. This compares to about 24 percent of
more...
Published on September 22, 2014
Comments 7
Category: Financial and taxes in retirement
EDITOR'S NOTE: Sept 10, 2015 -- We did a new and different survey on this topic last week. Here is a link to the Summary of Results from that article: "Maintaining Pre-Retirement Lifestyle a Challenge for Many".
September 15, 2014 -- Thanks to the over 800 members who took the time to contribute their valuable insights to last week's "Retirement Confidence" poll. We appreciate that so many of you are community minded enough to share your opinions and attitudes! As promised, here is a detailed report on the findings. At the end of this article you will also find a link to a document with more than 225 individual responses to question 12, "Do you have anything else you would like to tell us about your retirement confidence, or the other questions on this survey"? See a list of our previous survey reports at the end of the article.
Highlights
It is always interesting to find out exactly how our members feel
more...
Published on September 15, 2014
Comments 6
Category: Financial and taxes in retirement
August 23, 2014. How much of your pre-retirement income do you think you can count on once you are retired? A recent survey from T Rowe Price. "Retirees Live on Less", found that most of the retirees in their survey are getting along on about 2/3 of their working days income.
The survey was conducted by the big mutual fund company among people who had money in at least 1 401(k) account. Their median household assets – investments and home equity minus debts – were $473,000. That would put the sample much better off than the average retiree, since only half of Americans over 45 have managed to save
more...
Published on August 23, 2014
Comments 33
Category: Financial and taxes in retirement
July 28, 2014 -- Every year the 6 Trustees of the Medicare and Social Security trust funds issue a Report on the state of these 2 popular programs. This year the big news is favorable for the Medicare program - the year in which its Trust Funds are exhausted has been pushed back 4 years - to 2030. The good news is attributed to lower than expected inpatient hospital utilization, among other reasons, and represents a big change since last year's report.
Over in the world of Social Security the news is the same as last year - the combined Trust Fund for retirement and Disability depletion date
more...
Published on July 28, 2014
Comments 15
Category: Financial and taxes in retirement
Update Nov. 15, 2015: The Budget Bill signed into law in late 2015 dramatically changes the popular "File and Suspend" strategy discussed here. People who can take advantage of it by April 1, 2016 are grandfathered, but depending on your birth date, the strategy has gone away for other folks. See our article "How the New Social Security Claiming Rules Affect You" for more.
July 16, 2014 -- A recent story in MarketWatch by Robert Klein highlights a little known but interesting wrinkle to the "file and suspend" strategy for maximizing Social Security benefits. The wrinkle can result in a significant windfall of cash, which might be particularly useful if you contract a life-threatening illness before age 70.
For background, the file and suspend strategy is mainly taken to allow one spouse to collect the spousal benefit while the other spouse continues to accrue benefits past Full Retirement Age (age 66 to 67 for baby boomers). In this strategy one spouse
more...
Published on July 16, 2014
Comments 16
Category: Financial and taxes in retirement
July 1, 2014 -- Congratulations on getting the kids through college. With today's out of control tuition costs, that was no easy task. And nice going with the retirement, we hope you get a hard-earned rest from a lifetime of work. The “Broke” part isn’t so good though, so here are 8 steps on how to help fix that.
Unfortunately you are not alone. It is estimated that
more...
Published on June 30, 2014
Comments 88
Category: Financial and taxes in retirement
March 31, 2014 -- Thanks to everyone who took our Social Security Quiz - all 5,700 of you (and counting)! As we warned, it was not easy. In fact, Harry, a college friend of ours commented that if your editor was a professor back in the day no one would taken his classes! There is still plenty of good news though, especially since there is a grading curve:
- Some of the points that people messed up on are nice to know, but not crucial to
more...
Published on March 31, 2014
Comments 7
Category: Financial and taxes in retirement
March 24, 2014 — Chances are your Social Security benefit is one of the most important components of your retirement. But in our experience there is a fairly shocking lack of knowledge about this subject. To help you get the most out of your benefit we have prepared an 11…
more...
Published on March 24, 2014
Comments 5
Category: Financial and taxes in retirement
February 18, 2014 -- Now that all of us have assumed responsibility for our own retirements, conducting due diligence has become part of our job description. That responsibility extends to vetting the financial advisers and providers of financial services that we might hire to help with our retirement finances. If you decide to buy an annuity, which many experts believe most retirees should have a portion of their retirement in, you need to be especially careful.
The Wall Street Journal published an interesting article last week entitled "Who's Training Your Financial Advisor". The piece brings up how financial advisers
more...
Published on February 18, 2014
Comments 24
Category: Financial and taxes in retirement
February 4, 2014 -- So misunderstood - that about sums up reverse mortgages as far as we are concerned. Hyped by some unscrupulous providers, this tool for older Americans to tap the equity in their homes for retirement has acquired if not a bad name, at least a lot of cautionary looks by potential customers. That's why we were very happy to find a government site with some excellent background information about HUD's Reverse Mortgage Program. The link provides a great deal of helpful
more...
Published on February 4, 2014
Comments 6
