What Is The ‘Retirement Spending Smile’?

Our spending desires (and needs) change through time. Blanchett observes a “retirement spending smile” that varies slightly for retirees with different household spending levels.
A Tax on Giving – Understanding the Rules of the Gift Tax
Getting taxed once is hard enough, but getting hit a second time on the same dollars? That’s enough to give even a compliant taxpayer the urge to toss crates of tea into Boston Harbor. Whether double taxation like the gift tax is morally right or not is a topic for someone else to tackle. But if you […]
How Much Income Do I Need in Retirement?

Most people are focused on saving for retirement so they’ll have the money they need to fund their income in retirement. However, ask most people how much they’re going to spend in retirement and they have no idea. To plan for retirement effectively, you need to have some sense of what your spending needs are actually going to be.
How Can You Protect Yourself from Identity Theft and Data Breaches?

Data breaches are a constant concern in our modern society. As the latest in a long string of data breaches, Equifax recently announced they were the target of a cyberattack in which the sensitive information of nearly half of all Americans was compromised. You can follow this link to see if you’re one of the 143 […]
What’s the Most Appropriate Planning Age for Retirees?
The relationship between how long you’ll live and your sustainable spending rate is a big piece of the retirement planning puzzle.
How Likely Is It That You’ll Live Past 80?

One way to deal with the uncertainty of how long you’ll live when you plan for retirement is to look at survival probabilities.
What are Longevity Goals?
Of all of the different goal types, longevity goals are probably the least intuitive. Your longevity goals are based around the possibility that you will live longer than you expect. That sounds great, but your income plan needs to be able to fund those years of retirement (unless you plan on hustling Pinochle when you’re […]
Do You Need an Emergency Fund in Retirement?

Most retirees struggle with how to deal with their emergency fund. It’s there to help you deal with, well, emergencies. Retirees are just as prone to emergency as others, if not more so.
What Does Spending Look Like In Poor, Great, And Average Retirement Conditions?

With this overview of how the different variable spending strategies performed historically, it is worthwhile to put a bit more effort into understanding the relative performance of these strategies in different market environments.
Should Legacy Goals Be Part of Your Retirement Plan?

Figuring out how to plan for your legacy goals is a nice problem to have. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t worry about it. Whether or not legacy goals are part of your plan can seriously impact what your retirement will look like. Including them means you’ll have less to spend on yourself (and you’ll […]