Retirement Watch Weekly
Seeking Alternatives to Traditional Long Term Care Insurance
The crisis in long-term care insurance is causing people to look for alternatives to traditional LTCI. There are a few options, but you want to consider them care-fully before deciding on a plan. Each option has its own disadvantages. In our January and March visits we documented how some insurers are raising premiums on LTCI […]
Re-Evaluating Your Life Insurance
Many people are reconsidering their life insurance coverage. The new estate tax law and low interest rates change the equation for many people. But don’t make a quick decision. Make a careful review with your estate planner. Most permanent life insurance was purchased to help pay estate taxes. The 2010 tax law moves many estates […]
Using Trusts to Secure Stretch IRAs
Trusts are a key part of many estate plans. You can run into trouble, however, when you try to couple a trust and an IRA. You can use a trust to make your IRA last longer and control your heirs’ access to it, but you need an experienced estate planner to navigate the minefield of […]
Retirement Delayed Five Years
That’s apparently what most Americans concluded after adding up the effects of the financial crisis. A survey by Bankers Life and Casualty found that many think they’ll delay retirement by five years after the crisis. The survey focused on middle income Baby Boomers, surveying 500 Americans ages 47 to 65 with incomes between $25,000 and […]
Seeking Help Planning Retirement Income
Employers help employees plan for and accumulate funds for retirement. Employers provide education and resources to help employees decide how much to save and how much to invest to be able to fund an attractive retirement. Yet, as employees near retirement, employers don’t have much to offer. There aren’t too many tools for planning distributions […]
Analyzing the Recession’s Effect on Retirement
A major debate among financial advisers is how badly economic and market downturns affect individual finances in the long-term. Some advisers and economists believe these events are cyclical, and that a severe downturn will be offset by an offsetting boom period at some point. In other words, most people will be able to recover what […]
Assessing Medicare Proposals
It’s no secret that the current Medicare system is unsustainable, or it shouldn’t be a secret. That’s why there are a number of proposals and laws to change the system. There’s a great deal of confusion and misinformation about the different proposals, of course. Here’s an article with an analysis of the main proposals out […]
Dangers of Following Famous Investors
A widely-promoted investment strategy is to follow what famous and successful investors are doing. There even are some academic studies indicating the strategy can work. Most of these investors don’t tell us what they’re doing while they’re doing it. But a large number of them are required to file reports with the SEC that show […]
