How Long Can Retirees Expect To Live Once They Hit 65?

Life expectancy is tricky. Average life expectancy at birth is 71 years, but it’s constantly changing depending on your age and myriad other factors.
Three Questions To Evaluate Longevity Risk For Retirees

Longevity risk—the risk of running out of assets before running out of time—is fundamental to retirement. We know about the distribution of longevity for the overall population, but an individual cannot know in advance precisely where he or she will fall in the distribution.
Does Your Retirement Plan Account For Your Own Cognitive Decline?

When it comes to financial planning, Vanguard’s “Alpha” and Morningstar’s “Gamma” are really just the tip of the iceberg.
The Value of Sound Financial Decisions: From Alpha to Gamma

David Blanchett and Paul Kaplan at Morningstar created a similar study about the value of good decision making. Their results and approach are different from those of Vanguard, but the goal is the same: to quantify the costs of poor and good decision making. Naturally, many assumptions must be made regarding good financial decisions and the impact of poor financial decisions.
The Value of Sound Financial Decisions

Good financial planning decisions extend well beyond where and how you invest. Two major research efforts have attempted to quantify how good financial decision making can enhance your lifetime standard of living. It is important to understand what this research means, because this may not always equal a higher portfolio return in the short term.
What Is a Safety-First Retirement Plan?

The safety-first school of thought was originally derived from academic models of how people allocate their resources over a lifetime to maximize lifetime satisfaction.
The 4% Rule And The Search For A Safe Withdrawal Rate

Of the two main schools of thought in retirement income planning, the probability-based school of thought is probably most familiar to the public and financial professionals.
Two Philosophies of Retirement Income Planning

Within the world of retirement income planning, the siloed nature of financial services between investments and insurance leads to two opposing philosophies about how to build a retirement plan.
Which Is Better for Retirement Income: Insurance or Investments?

Retirement planning experts have long debated the question: Which is better for retirement income: insurance or investments? Wade Pfau weighs in.
Using a Reverse Mortgage to Purchase a New Home

One option in the broader category of using reverse mortgages for debt coordination for housing is the HECM for Purchase program, which was started in 2009 as a way to use a reverse mortgage to purchase a new home.