Creating a strong retirement plan – and avoiding retirement mistakes – are critical steps in planning for your future. Of course, unless you’re a financial professional, there may be a lot you don’t know. After 30 +years of working personally with retirees, I want to share four common errors to avoid so you can feel confident about the plan you’ve got in place.
In today’s digital age, managing and accessing your money has never been easier. You can interact with your bank accounts online, set up automatic bill payments, and use apps that allow you to track your money, investments, and budgeting – all at the touch of your fingertips. Although it’s convenient, having so much of our personal data online also opens us up to the risk of identity theft and scammers who may try to take advantage. Luckily, there are steps that you can take to strengthen your cybersecurity and better protect your financial and personal information.
Below, we’ll discuss six ways you can safeguard your personal data.
It’s normal for your relationship with your parents to change as they age. Perhaps you’re finding yourself helping them out more around the house or assisting them in getting to and from doctors’ appointments and staying on top of their medicine. Like many people, you may even find yourself taking a larger role in helping them manage their finances. As you step further into this caretaker role, it’s common to struggle with how to talk to your aging parents about money.
This reversal of roles in the parent-child relationship can be difficult to adjust to. Adult children may be nervous about appearing greedy or overbearing by asking too many questions about money, and aging parents might be hesitant to admit that they need help as their health declines. Despite the tension that may come along with these kinds of conversations, talking to your aging parents about their finances and helping them plan for the future can save your family time, money, and stress.
Here are a few tips to help you get the conversations started.
When you get sick, you go to a doctor. If you find yourself in legal trouble, you go to a lawyer. When you have car trouble, you go to a mechanic. All of these make perfect sense, right? And yet, too often when people struggle financially, they hesitate to seek out the assistance of a professional. In fact, recent research on the topic shows that nearly 65% of adults are choosing to take a self-directed approach to financial planning. However, if you want to improve your finances, chances are you could benefit from a financial advisor.
Having a professional you trust to help guide you through the complexity of the financial world can be incredibly beneficial in both the short term and the long term. If any of the five signs below describe your current financial situation, you may want to consider hiring a professional.
If you qualify for a health savings account (HSA), it’s a good idea to understand all the benefits it can provide. It can be a valuable tool to combat the high costs of healthcare, which are only continuing to rise. Couple this with the fact that none of us can predict when we will need care as we age, and healthcare becomes a variable that poses a significant threat to your financial security.
HSAs afford the opportunity to take control even in the face of unpredictability. Still, they are largely underutilized. So, if you have an HSA or you’re considering getting one, here are five things you should know.
The primary function of financial journalism seems to be terrifying us out of ever achieving our financial goals by shrieking about the market’s volatility. We’ve been reminded of this almost hourly as the S&P 500 approached “official bear market territory,” defined as closing 20% below its January all-time high.
Every market decline of this magnitude has its own unique precipitating causes. I think it’s fair to say that the current episode is a response to two issues: severe inflation, and the extent to which the economy might be driven into a recession by the Federal Reserve’s somewhat belated efforts to root that inflation out. (Russia’s war on Ukraine, supply chain issues, and the like are surely contributing to the angst, but recession vs. inflation is the main event, in my judgment.)
There’s a lot that goes into estate planning and, hopefully, you’ve got a plan in place to ensure your wishes are carried out. However, one piece of the puzzle that is missing for many people is ensuring that beneficiaries are listed for every policy and account – and that they are kept up to date. Indeed, it is critically important for you to review your beneficiary designations on any retirement accounts, annuities, or life insurance policies and make sure they each list one or more current beneficiaries. Why is this such an important step? Well, even if you have a will, it does not override your designated beneficiaries if it states something different.
Conducting a beneficiary review before you retire allows you to be sure that you have the correct beneficiaries listed and designations determined. This means reviewing your beneficiaries in light of your long-term goals and objectives while also taking into consideration tax laws and other policies regarding the distributions for each type of account or policy. Below are four steps to guide you as you review your own beneficiary designations.
Moments passed with children and grandchildren is always time well spent. The lessons you give them will last the rest of their lives. April is Financial Literacy Month, an ideal time to begin a conversation with your grandkids about money.
Giving them the benefits of the lessons you’ve learned can help set them up for a happier, more financially secure life ahead. And don’t be afraid to share your successes as well as your mistakes—there’s wisdom in both.
Here are three essential financial lessons you can teach the next generation to set them up for success:
Practicing philanthropy is a very personal decision. More often than not, it’s about more than money – it’s about your values, passions, and vision for the future. However, even if saving money on your taxes isn’t your main reason for giving back, there are still several tax benefits that come from charitable giving that shouldn’t be overlooked.
Below we’ll discuss four tax-advantaged ways that you can make a charitable gift.
None of us like to think about a world that we’re no longer a part of, yet we all have limited time on Earth. Having to make decisions about who should raise your children or which of your children will best manage your assets can be uncomfortable. But the critical aspect of estate planning is this: if you don’t make a plan, then you lose your power. Without an estate plan in place, your assets may end up in court and divvied up based on a judge’s decision rather than your own.
A strong estate plan is about more than simply having a will written down. You’ll want to be sure that you’ve thoroughly planned for all of your assets as well as put a plan in place to ensure they transfer as smoothly as possible to your heirs. Needless to say, there’s a lot that goes into estate planning. It can be intimidating to begin the process, but the following checklist can help guide you as you begin putting your own estate plan in place.
It’s no secret that the key to a successful and fulfilling retirement is a well-planned, comprehensive retirement plan. While creating your retirement plan, there are three big questions that you must ask yourself in order to clarify your vision for this phase of your life and determine what you need to plan for. After all, a retirement plan can only work if you know what you want and need! So, ask yourself the three questions below and then you can use this newfound clarity to develop an intentional plan for your future.
As we approach the April 18, 2022 tax filing deadline, remember that preparation is the key to maximizing your tax situation. It’s never too soon to start thinking about how to handle your federal return, and you can use this tax prep checklist to help you meet your obligations and take advantage of any savings opportunities.
Most people spend decades of their working lives planning for and dreaming about how they want life to look in retirement. They plan where their income will come from, where they’re going to live, what trips they may be going on, who they’re going to spend their time with, and many more exciting details. Yet, despite all the diligent planning, many retirees find themselves shocked when they realize that adjusting to retirement is more difficult than they anticipated.
Most retirement advice is focused on how to save smartly so that you’re financially secure when you leave the workforce. This is understandable considering you most likely want to live comfortably in retirement and doing so usually requires a sizable nest egg. However, as critical as those pre-retirement money moves are, it’s equally as important to think about your wealth management strategy once you retire. You want to be able to enjoy the fruits of your hard work without worries of running out of money – which is a common cause for anxiety among retirees.
This conundrum ends up creating two unfortunate camps that retirees can find themselves stuck in if they aren’t careful. One camp is so afraid of running out of money that they barely spend anything and deny themselves a retirement that they deserve. Conversely, there is another camp of retirees who spend more than they should and put their financial security at serious risk.
Your goal should be to find an even balance between these two extremes and the strategies below will help you to pursue your retirement dreams without putting your savings in jeopardy.
If you want to achieve financial independence and live the life of your dreams, you’ll need to adopt wealth-building habits that help you accomplish your goals. Like any habits, wealth-building habits must be regularly practiced until they become second nature in order to be effective. To do that, you must exercise patience and commitment.
The first step is to figure out what wealth means to you. Get clear on what your goals are and then start employing the habits below to bring them to fruition.
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