The Impact of Unexpected Inflation
Inflation and the four L’s of retirement: longevity, legacy, lifestyle, and liquidity.
Are Municipal Bonds Right for You?
We all want to minimize the amount of taxes that we owe. Municipal bonds, or munis, often seem like a great solution since they’re billed as being tax free (which we’ll talk about in a bit), but everyone else thinks so, too, which means that their prices reflect their tax advantages. This doesn’t disqualify munis as a great tool for retirement investors, but you do need to be careful about how you use them.
Handle with CARE: 5 Years Before Retirement
Rather than developing an exhaustive list of to do’s that may or may not be appropriate for everyone, our approach is to help the client develop a retirement framework for retirement or way of thinking about retirement. We call this the “CARE” retirement framework and it will help you build a foundation for a successful retirement.
Preparing for Retirement When You’re Starting Late
Everyone knows that you’re supposed to start saving for retirement early, but that doesn’t always happen. In fact, if you look at the numbers, it’s actually pretty rare. Most people are woefully unprepared for retirement, but you can change that.
Does Dollar Cost Averaging Make Sense?
The appeal of market timing is obvious. Who wouldn’t want to get in and out of the market at the best time every time? We’ve talked a lot about market timing in the past – timing risk premiums, trying to time the markets on a daily basis, and the importance of staying disciplined even when it seems obvious the markets are going to go down.
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.
Charitable Planning – Leveraging Those Gains
The IRS encourages charitable giving by classifying donations to qualified charities as tax-deductible. As a result, it’s possible to “do good, while doing well.”
What Does Your Funded Ratio Score Mean?
By providing your financial objectives and the ways you want to fund them with essential and discretionary expenses, you can create a framework. Your Funded Ratio score will tell you how close your aspirations are to your reality.
The Difference Between ‘Safe’ and ‘Optimal’ Withdrawal Rates for Retirement Spending
Distinguishing between “safe” withdrawal rates and “optimal” withdrawal rates is an essential piece of the retirement spending conversation.
Taking Portfolio Spending Into the Real World for Retirees
There has been too much emphasis on the portfolio and spending conservatively to keep failure rates low. This is not the whole story for retirement income. Certain circumstances, which we will explore, may allow retirees to accept a higher probability of “failure,” and spend more aggressively from their investment portfolio.
