Retirement Planning

Retirement is an exciting milestone after years of work. It’s a new chapter where we can relax, spend time with family and friends, travel, support personal causes, pursue opportunity, or else define our post-career life as we would like. Indeed, many retirees are taking their golden years by the horns and enjoying it on their own terms like no generation has before.

Of course, the path to a secure retirement has challenges. Part of that is navigating the “retirement risk zone,” or the 5-10 years leading up to retirement and in early retirement itself. This period has a big influence on your retirement money, so the strategies that you put in place (or don’t) could make a difference.

Given that, it’s natural for questions to come to mind. What should you look out for in the retirement risk zone? What sort of options do you have to protect your financial future during this time? Why is the retirement risk zone such a crucial point for your retirement outlook?

In this article, we will go over more about the retirement risk zone, its unique financial risks, and some ways to help you navigate this uncertain phase of life.

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Once you reach your 50s, retirement is around the corner, but you probably have many life priorities at this point. Family, work, and other responsibilities take up a lot of attention. Planning for retirement may be the last thing on your mind.

Nonetheless, it’s still important to pause and reflect on what will matter to you in this next life chapter, even if you expect that your retirement will be 10 or more years from now. Seeing where you are financially and whether you can take more steps toward your retirement goals will give you more time to get everything in place. Of course, one of those goals will be ensuring that you have enough income to last for all of your golden years.

In your 50s, there is also the risk of “sequence of returns,” or having investment losses in the years just before or in early retirement. No one can predict what the markets will do, and the unfortunate timing of investment losses is what makes this a real hazard. Even small losses can have a heavy hand on your retirement income and what sort of lifestyle that you might be able to sustain.

So, how should you plan for retirement in your 50s? In this article, we will go over some high-level steps to follow, explore your options, and set a plan so that you can have lasting financial security once you are retired.

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After working for many years, people want to have the best chance that they can get in enjoying a secure retirement lifestyle and staying retired. That brings up a crucial question in retirement planning. What financial strategies are most likely to get retirees to that point?

In a study conducted by Ernst & Young, researchers looked at a variety of financial strategies to see which ones would perform best. It brought up an intriguing result: financial strategies with permanent life insurance and deferred income annuities beat out investment-only strategies, providing retirees with enhanced benefits.

EY researchers looked at five different strategies using Monte Carlo analysis. The study findings claimed that taking income from annuities and permanent life insurance in retirement could indeed create better results for retirees.

In this article, we will dive into the EV study, its findings, and explore the reasons behind why these insurance-based strategies may help retirees beat the odds.

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Retirement is a big life milestone, as it’s when people depart the workplace and start on a new chapter of personal fulfillment and exploration. However, life doesn’t just hit the pause button once you have retired. A number of post-retirement risks and challenges require careful planning and attention.

From outliving your income to a rising cost of living, here are a few things to keep mind in mind for post-retirement risks that you may come across. In this article, we will go over those risks and explore strategies to effectively manage them.

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“Can I retire yet?” It’s a question that many people ask. The answer is deeply personal, quite different for everyone, and depends on many factors. Some drivers include how you will replace the income that you were earning from your career, what you have done to feel as ready as possible for retirement, and how you will handle the new life changes.

In many respects, retirement is the “next chapter in life,” but it can also be a period of uncertainty. As you near the bend, how should you approach that question of “when can I retire?” How can you be sure about when the right time to retire is for you?

It will ultimately hinge on your personal goals, but here are a few things to keep in mind as you think about this question.

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You can use some simple formulas to calculate how much a given investment might grow over time, such as the Rule of 72. This rule can show you how long it will take for your money to double at a certain rate of return, but it also assumes the growth isn’t taxed.

What about estimating how long it will take for an investment to grow but when the growth is taxable? This is where simple calculations such as the Rule of 108 can come in handy. The Rule of 108 is similar to the Rule of 72 insofar as it lets you see how quickly your taxable investment might double in value. It also assumes a federal income tax rate of 32% that applies to the growth annually.

In this article, we will go more over the Rule of 108, how to use it to get an idea of how it long it would take for your taxable money to grow, some pros and cons, and how you can get the most out of it.

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Whether you already have a retirement nest egg or are considering an investment, the Rule of 72 can give you some idea of how fast your money will grow over time. Many financial advisors use this rule to help their clients understand the returns that they may get from a certain investment.

If you are looking for a quick, practical way to see how long it can take for your money to double, the Rule of 72 is highly useful. However, just as with other rules of thumb in finance, it’s only a back-of-envelope formula.

There are some limits to the Rule of 72, and it also assumes that you will get a certain average rate of return each year. Of course, financial markets don’t work that way, so any investment won’t have the same growth rate each year. For those near or in retirement, there is also the potential hazard of sequence of returns risk having an impact on how much money they might have for lifelong retirement income.

In this article, we will go over what the Rule of 72 is, how it works, and how you can put it to good use in your retirement planning and investments in general.

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Are you looking for an experienced retirement financial advisor to help you plan for a secure, comfortable future? Retirement has changed, and planning for it isn’t quite what it used to be. In the past, you worked for the same company for decades and were rewarded with a pension.

Those days are long gone, with pensions now largely a distant memory. People are also living longer, and thanks to advances in healthcare and technology, they can spend up to one-third of their adult lives in retirement.

The question then arises of how to make your money last for all that time. For starters, retirement doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone.

Some want to call it quits with work and enter into a more relaxed lifestyle. Others find meaning in continuing to work, remaining active in entrepreneurship, pursue consulting opportunities, starting their own business, or even embarking on a second-act career. Still, others might want to travel, visit foreign lands that they have dreamed of seeing, or get involved with causes or organizations which they care about.

No matter what, you will want to keep up your lifestyle in retirement. There are many things that can affect your retirement income, including healthcare, rising medical costs, taxes, changing housing situations, and long-term care needs.

The advisor whom you work with needs to understand all of these possibilities and more.

Being a competent retirement financial advisor is about far more than choosing investment strategies and growing your pot of money. It’s about making your money last for the rest of your lifetime, generating reliable income, and providing the resources to enjoy retirement as you see fit.

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You may have heard of acronyms called “LIFO” and “FIFO” in financial discussions with your advisor or in some other circles. But what exactly do they mean?

LIFO means “Last-In, First-Out” – in other words, the gains or interest earnings in an account are distributed first and subject to taxes. FIFO means “First-In, First-Out,” referring to how your principal, or the original sum of money in the account, would be distributed first and would be taxed.  

While they aren’t common terms, LIFO and FIFO generally come up in discussions around retirement assets or other financial holdings. For example, non-qualified annuities are subject to LIFO for tax purposes, and both LIFO and FIFO can apply to stocks that someone owns, as another example.

This article will look at both FIFO and LIFO and explain the basics of how they work.

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You may be familiar with the Rule of 25x as a method for estimating how much you will need to save for your retirement. But most of us don’t really know what the Rule of 25x is or how it works. Is it still useful in today’s retirement world? 

At its simplest, the Rule of 25x says, if you save 25 times what you would like your annual income in retirement to be, that sum could last for 30 years.

As with every retirement rule, whether it’s the three-legged stool for retirement income or the Rule of 120, the Rule of 25x is imperfect. It’s good to remember these imperfections when using the Rule of 25x for planning your retirement.

This article will examine how the Rule of 25x works, some of its problems, and alternative ways that you can work to ensure that you will have enough lifelong income in retirement.

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