If you've been to any of my Maximizing Social Security courses, you probably understand that I think that delaying Social Security at least for one spouse makes a lot of sense.   Ideally if a spouse can delay their own Social Security until age 70, it will provide maximum payments for them and the subsequent surviving spouse and put less pressure on the investment portfolio to deliver results year in and year out. … [Read more...]

As you approach retirement, there are fewer and fewer opportunities to increase and improve your own Social Security benefit, but they still exist.   The benefit amount of the Social Security benefit for your own working record is based on a complex formula that takes the highest 35 years of your work history. Therefore, the easiest way to increase your own Social Security benefit is to maximize these 35 years.   If you are an individual who has not worked in the Social Security … [Read more...]

Since March 2009 the stock market has been on a perpetual rally.The price of the S&P 500 has more than quadrupled. It leaves many to wonder how long this bull market will last. Many can still remember the go-go 90s, an entire decade of unsurpassed stock market performance each year which just seemed to go higher and higher.   They also remember the corrections of 2000-2003 and 2008 as well... where they gave back much of the previous gains they had enjoyed. The year 2000 to the year … [Read more...]

As you may know, new tax law changes were recently implemented which may impact you.   In reviewing these changes, I came across a good article on CNN news that does a nice job of summarizing the changes.   (From http://money.cnn.com/2017/12/15/news/economy/gop-tax-plan-details/index.html ) … [Read more...]