Retirement Watch Weekly
When You Can Take Tax Breaks for Long-Term Care Expenses
Long-term care costs you less when all or part of the expenses are tax deductible. Know the rules about deducting long-term care (LTC) expenses and your out-of-pocket cost of providing care for yourself or family members could be reduced. LTC expenses are tax deductible only when they aren’t reimbursed by insurance or other sources. To […]
The Little-Known Way to Quickly Build a Large Roth IRA
A little-known strategy can help many people quickly generate large Roth IRAs. Some call it the Back Door Roth IRA and others call it the Mega Roth IRA, though both those nicknames also are used for other strategies. Some even call it the Mega Back Door Roth IRA. Whatever name you want to give it, […]
Runaway Guardianships: Three Steps to Avoiding Them
I never would have guessed that Britney Spears would be the name and face that makes the case for having your estate plan in order, but that’s the current reality. The 39-year-old entertainer has been under a conservatorship since 2008. That means she was deemed unable to care for herself and not qualified to make […]
Common But Surprising Estate Planning Problems and How to Identify Them
Many estate plans look solid on the surface, but a deep dive into a plan, and especially into the dynamics around it, often reveals a plan with a serious problem or two. Estate owners are surprised when these problems are pointed out to them. If they aren’t fortunate enough to have the problems revealed, their […]
How to Shelter Your Estate Plan from Disasters [Part 2]
In last week’s edition of Retirement Watch Weekly, I shared my checklist on how to protect your estate plan from the kinds of disasters people rarely consider. Today, let’s wrap up the checklist with steps 4 through 7: Step 4: Document your property. To recover all or most of what you lose in a disaster, […]
Bob’s Journal for 8/26/21
Older Adults Less Likely to Need Senior Care Residences Technology, medical improvements and better habits combined to make older Americans more independent than 10 years ago, causing a lower percentage of them to move to nursing homes or assisted living facilities in 2019 than in 2010. Those are the results of the annual National Health […]
How to Shelter Your Estate Plan from Disasters
It can happen to any of us… It doesn’t have to be a historic outbreak, hurricane, flood, or wildfire. You could be at risk from a broken water pipe, a tree falling on your home, or some other event. Bottom line: You don’t want short-term events to cause a permanent reduction in your financial security. […]
Bob’s Journal for 8/19/21
How Stock Sectors Fared in the ETF Revolution Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) of the S&P 500 sectors began trading on December 22, 1998. We can look at the returns to see how the different sectors have done. Unlike published stock indexes, these are real returns available to investors after expenses and in real-time trading. It is […]
