The Future of Financial Advice
Should American financial advisors always be looking out for the best interests of their clients? Should our government intervene to ensure they do so? Australia thinks so, and has passed new laws to make it happen. To illustrate, let’s imagine that your credit card company offered to exchange your old card for a new one, […]
Procrastination Costs You Money
Smart, well-intentioned investors may harm their financial futures when they delay money matters. Tomorrow seems like a great day for difficult things. If it’s not fun, if we lack the proper skills or if the task takes us back to previous painful mistakes, tomorrow usually seems best. When outsourcing professional services, procrastination can be especially […]
Distribution Planning in Retirement
Retirement income involves thinking about the amount of money that you need for expenses and determining the source of these funds. The key difference between where you get your cash in retirement years versus working years is that you’ll no longer receive a paycheck in retirement, and you’ll need to replace that income from investments […]
How to manage expenses in retirement
The basic concept is really pretty simple: keep annual expenses below the planned withdrawal rate of your assets. As usual, it’s the details that can get a little tricky.
Help! The Required Minimum Distribution from my IRA is more than I usually spend
When your required minimum distribution (RMD) is larger than the amount of income you need for expenses, you have many options for handling the excess. We find it is helpful to manage the extra amounts wisely in order to avoid spending more than you had planned.
When am I required to start withdrawing from my IRA?
Generally, for the year in which an individual turns age 70 ½ an individual must start taking distributions from their retirement accounts. Whether these amounts are needed for funding your retirement, the IRS requires that you begin taking the distributions.
UPS AND DOWNS ON THE PATH TO FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE
It’s easy to succumb to the urge to sell if the market takes a header or buy if it’s headed upward. But sudden action is usually a mistake. In the late 1980s, Harvard psychologist Paul Andreassen made news with a research project that found that people who listened to market news actually made lower returns. Why? Because those who sold – or bought – during a market swing probably found a day later that the market was really running on hype, not fundamentals.
Fee-Only vs. Commission and Fee-Based Financial Advisors
There are many terms out there describing financial advisors and sometimes it’s hard to figure out what they all mean and why it matters. It does matter. Their “classification” can tell you a lot about how they are compensated, work with clients, and their fiduciary responsibility. Fee-Only financial planners are registered investment advisors (RIAs) with […]
Money-Saving Ideas that Work for YOU!
It’s true that small savings can add up, especially when applied on a consistent basis. A list of spending strategies follows that you can apply almost every time you shop. And these savings can be invested to help you realize your financial objectives. Remember that you haven’t actually saved anything until it makes its way […]
Top Ten Tips for Your Financial Life
Unfortunately, most people’s general education didn’t include some important life skills such as how to manage your finances. Of course, we develop many skills as life goes on just because we need them. Still, there are a handful of proven financial basics that aren’t common knowledge. It’s our hope that these best practices will help […]