Today, I was thinking about the retirement planning process that I take my clients through.  I spent time thinking about each step that is important to plan for in order to have a successful blueprint.   These stages include understanding how much retirement expenses will be, how to create reliability of income in retirement, how to deal with uncertainty of healthcare expenses and market risk, to name a few. … [Read more...]

Whenever we help a prospective client test their current plan for success, we also make sure to test two potential risks as well. The first tests a retirement plan in the event of a premature death of the spouse and loss of pension or Social Security income associated with that spouse. If the loss of this income is not sufficiently offset by the reduction of the expenses of the surviving spouse, it will cause an increase in the required distributions from investments to maintain the lifestyle … [Read more...]

Company retirement plans can be a great place to save for retirement.   Not only are contributions are tax-deductible against income, there are much higher contribution limits than their IRA counterpart. Add to that company matching provisions, and it becomes irresistible.   What most of us know but may not understand completely is that there is a trade-off to the tax benefit that we got when we contributed to the plan. … [Read more...]

Fidelity Investments releases a study each year estimating the out of pocket cost for healthcare expenses. Their recently updated study for this year puts the tab at $275,000 for a couple during retirement (https://www.fidelity.com/viewpoints/retirement/retiree-health-costs-rise), which is $15,000 more than the last time they released their numbers. … [Read more...]

The #1 fear that the clients that I work with have is running out of money in retirement. It comes as a surprise to many that one can fairly easily determine how long an investment portfolio will last in retirement, even with the level of uncertainty that is created in the markets. There are three primary factors that influence how long investments last in retirement.\ … [Read more...]