Financial Planning Topics
Refinancing for a 32% Increase in Income
My wife and I just completed a couple big “refinancing” retirement moves last month. One may ask, “Why would someone do any refinancing in our current higher interest rate environment?” If you are refinancing a mortgage or some other debt you owe, you would not. But if you are “refinancing” a Delayed Income Annuity (DIA), […]
Should I Purchase an Annuity Today?
In the summer of 2020, I wrote a blog post about why we decided to purchase two annuities. Recently, a friend asked me if we were glad we made the purchases and if I thought purchasing an annuity today was still a good idea. The answer, as with everything in financial planning is, “it depends.”
How much of your Social Security Benefit is actually taxable in retirement?
As someone who knows a lot about financial planning in general, and how retirement income is taxed in particular, this past year I discovered there was one area of the tax law that I was not knowledgeable of all the details. That is, how much of your social security benefit will be taxed. I am […]
Revisiting Portfolio Risk Tolerance…..Again
With the recent market volatility during 2022, I thought I would add a quick update to my blog site. What caused me to do this was a recent conversation I had with a family member. Like all of us, the recent down-draft in the stock and bond markets has been very unsettling to this person. […]
Revisiting the 4% Rule
In the last couple years, I have been pondering this question, whether the 4% rule was still valid in the new investment environment going forward in the 2020s. I first wrote about the 4% rule in one of my first posts on this site in 2011 (you can read that post here). If you do […]
Should you Delay Collecting your Social Security Benefits?
Recently, I have received a few emails on my recent post (read it here) that I advised, in considering whether to buy a commercial income annuity, one should first delay collecting their social security benefits until age 70. These emailers believe this is the wrong advice for collecting social security. One of their concerns is […]
The Deferral Trap
My wife follows Twitter and sent me the below attached piece from Bloomberg about 401(k)s. I did not believe the title at first, but the article does make some valid points about the changes in tax laws and the availability of low cost funds to the general public since 401(k)s were created in the late […]
Fitting an Income Annuity into your Retirement Plan
In my last post I discussed my thinking about why I decided to purchase an annuity from an insurance company. This post will discuss how I arrived at the type of income annuity and how much to purchase.
Retirement Planning: Managing the Biggest Risk
If you are near or in retirement, there are several risks that can derail your retirement plans. These risks all need to be addressed in some way and some are easier to manage than others.
Retirement Planning….Market Volatility What to Do?
Late last year the equity markets experienced much volatility causing a lot of angst among investors, especially retirement investors. It is during uneasy times like this that many people start to have feelings of panic and forget the basics of investing. So, I thought I would use this post to remind investors about a couple […]
