Retirement Watch Weekly
Curbing the High Cost of Retirement Medical Care
The cost of medical care continues to rise and to be the wild card in retirement plans. Reports and studies update their estimates of the cost of retirement medical care each year. They show the cost to be high and also very unpredictable for individual retirees and couples. The studies focus on average or median […]
Understanding the Five-Year Waiting Period for Converted IRAs
The five-year waiting period for Roth IRAs causes some confusion, because the rules are confusing. For a distribution from a Roth IRA to be tax-free, it must be made after the later of the owner’s turning age 59½ and when the owner has had the Roth IRA for at least five years. For distributions from […]
Expanding the Roth IRA Opportunity
Roth IRAs remain one of the most neglected tax and financial planning opportunities. Even many of those who convert their traditional IRAs to Roths don’t take advantage of all the strategies available to maximize tax-free wealth. It’s understandable that people are slow to convert their traditional IRAs to Roths. There are many factors to evaluate […]
March 2014
March 28, 2014 04:14 p.m. Your Retirement Finance Week in Review Periods of low volatility in the markets often are followed by periods of high volatility. Stock market volatility in 2013 was low, and it’s been followed by a lot of volatility in the first quarter of 2014. But the volatility has taken investors on […]
Breaking the 4% Retirement Spending Rule
JP Morgan joins us among those who criticize the 4% rule for determining retirement spending. While widely accepted among financial planners, the rule has various weaknesses. By using the rule methodically, retirees have a major risk of spending either too much or too little in retirement based on their circumstances. JP Morgan constructed a model […]
Where Does This Bull Market Rank?
Many people are worried about the stock market rally since 2009 because they say it’s gone on too long and has to reverse soon. May not. Bespoke Investments prepared a couples of tables of the longest and strongest bull markets. Looking only at the results, this bull market could continue for a while yet before […]
Coming Changes in Medicare/Medicare Advantage
More changes, none of them positive, are on the way for those enrolled in Medicare or Medicare Advantage. First are the broader changes that apply to all Medicare prescription drug beneficiaries. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid quietly released a proposal to limit the types of drugs that are protected under the program. Those in […]
The Best Stock Market Indicator?
Investors search for the ideal indicator or signal that tells them when to change their investment portfolios. Here’s the latest candidate, from the blog Philosophical Economics. It’s not a traditional market indicator at all and doesn’t even use any of the traditional stock market metrics. The indicator is the ratio of the total amount of […]
