Retirement Watch Weekly
Estate Planning Tips for Surviving Spouses
Life can be difficult and complicated for surviving spouses. Contending with some financial rules and procedures in addition to everything else can amount to piling on. Yet, widows and widowers need to make key decisions about their finances, and some decisions need to be made within deadlines. Social Security, IRAs, employer retirement plans, and investments […]
Estate Planning Lessons for Grandkids from the Crisis
The bubble, its bursting, and the continuing financial crisis provided many lessons in personal finance. The biggest beneficiaries can be today’s young people, if they learn the right lessons. News reports and some surveys indicate that some are taking away the right ideas, but others are drawing the wrong conclusions and making their futures more […]
Warnings, Changes on Self-Directed IRAs
You can own gold, real estate, private companies, hedge funds, and more in your IRA. You won’t hear this from most IRA custodians. They limit your investment choices to mutual funds and publicly-traded stocks and bonds and maybe a few other assets. Their idea of a self-directed IRA is that you can choose from these […]
Deducting Medical Expenses
Many people believe that they’re no longer able to deduct medical expenses. They don’t even track their expenses or enter them on their income tax returns. That can be a costly mistake. Medical insurance covers fewer expenses each year, and more people would save taxes by deducting medical expenses than realize it. Congress did make […]
Why to Own Long Term Bonds
Many investors say you shouldn’t own treasury bonds because interest rates are too low. You aren’t being paid enough to own them. We’ve owned long term treasury bonds in our Retirement Watch portfolios since June 2011 and have earned over 20% on them. We continue to own them because economic growth is slow, inflation is […]
Making Family Wealth Last With a Family Council
You’ve probably heard the phrase “shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations” to describe the pattern of how one generation earns the wealth, the next preserves or uses it, and the third loses it and starts over. A key issue for many people today is how to ensure the next generations benefit from their […]
A Revealing Look at Hospice Care
Most people think of hospice care as a nonprofit program offered to help the terminally ill through their last days. In fact, it’s a big business filled with all sorts of aggressive sales tactics, bonuses, referrals fees, potential conflicts of interest, and regular targets or goals for employees. Bloomberg has a revealing report on this […]
Who’s Eligible for Aid & Attendance
You meet the service requirements for Aid and Attendance when you served 90 days or more on active duty, with at least one day in wartime, and who were honorably discharged. Widows and widowers of such veterans also are eligible. You need not have served overseas or in combat. Anyone who was a member of […]
