Retirement Watch Weekly
The First Retirement Planning Question
It always is nice when the rest of the financial world begins to catch on to what I’ve been teaching my Retirement Watch readers. Many years ago, I began telling people that the first issue in retirement planning is deciding how you want to live in retirement. You can’t determine a realistic spending plan until […]
Will the Fed Pause Too Late to Help the Economy?
The Fed will continue to tighten monetary policy, the economy will continue to slow and earnings growth will continue to decline. The real question is, “By how much?” I warned last spring that we were in the late stage of the economic cycle, and for several months have said we’re past peak growth. Investors began […]
Bob’s Journal for 1/24/19
Is all the bad news reflected in the markets, or are the markets still too optimistic? It is early in earnings season, and we’ve received a mixed message so far. Last Tuesday, the stock indexes had nice rebounds following positive earnings reports from IBM, Procter & Gamble and United Technologies. The gains, however, were mostly […]
You Can Beat The Tax on Social Security Benefits
The federal tax rules for Social Security benefits haven’t changed in many years. They remain complicated and snare more retirees each year. A number of my readers are old enough to remember when Social Security retirement benefits were tax free on their federal income tax returns. That ended in the 1980s, and taxes on the […]
How to Invest Your Cash Today
For the first time in years, investors have some reasonable choices for investing their cash. The Federal Reserve’s aggressive monetary policies following the financial crisis kept interest rates on traditional cash investments near zero. Investors either had to accept these low rates or take more risk to earn higher yields on their cash. The situation […]
Why This Could Be A Good Time To Convert Your IRA
You should regularly revisit the decision of whether or not to convert a traditional IRA to a Roth IRA, and recent events have made this an ideal time to re-evaluate the decision. A major reason people don’t convert their IRAs is the cost. The converted amount has to be included in gross income as though […]
6 Ways You Can End the Confusion, Inconvenience of RMDs
IRA required minimum distributions (RMDs) mess up the financial plans of many IRA owners and create a new set of problems for them. But you can overcome these problems. While the tax code requires IRA owners to begin minimum annual distributions after age 70½, most IRA owners don’t need the money to pay their living […]
How to Choose Between Wills and Trusts
There are two tools available for passing the bulk of your legacy to others, and the best choice for one person might not be a good choice for another. The foundation of your estate plan can be either a will or a trust, usually a revocable Living Trust. They’re not exclusive. Most estates have both […]
