Category Archives: Retirement

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IRS Announces Increased Contribution Limits for 2015

Retirement plan contribution limits for 2015 have increased so you can make bigger deposits into tax-deferred savings plans. Also, if you’ve just turned 50, your ability to catch up on retirement savings has increased. In short: you can save more than you could before.

Financial Advisor Talking To Senior Couple At Home

The good news: you can add another $500 to your 401(k) contributions. If you’re 50 years old, you can add another $500 to your savings contributions. Phase out thresholds have changed, too—you can make another grand, and save it.

Tax-deferred savings is truly one of the only benefits afforded to us by Congress, and I say: MAXIMIZE IT.

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How To Create Retirement Income from Your Investments

I’ve been helping people create retirement income for 15 years now—and many of my clients are fully retired. Still, a lot of people I know don’t relate to the word Retirement. So in my practice, I use the words Financial Freedom and Retirement interchangeably.

If you’ve always save diligently, you might have wondered: “How do I actually create income that I can spend in my retirement?”

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Creating consistent retirement income is an advisor’s most important work

What I’m Talking About is This:

One day there will be a day when you stop working. You might choose the day. And the day might be determined for you—by a layoff or failing health. No matter how it happens, that day is a very important day. On that day, you’re betting that the money you’ve saved will outlive you.

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Do You Know How Much You Need to Retire?

How Do You Figure Out How Much You Need to Retire?

Answer: It’s complicated. But small changes in trajectory can make a really big difference later on.

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Achieving impressive goals takes impressive commitment

Many people just end up saving whatever they can manage to save after they pay their bills. But that’s likely a dangerous way to plan for the future.

So what’s a better solution?

Plenty of sources recommend this or that savings rate, but that can almost be a backward way to look at things.

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How to Understand Mutual Funds like a Pro

If you want to understand mutual funds, you can spend all day reading prospectuses and researching technicals on Morningstar. Or, if you’d rather spend your weekend enjoying yourself, you can take a big picture approach to understand mutual funds from a pro’s perspective.

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Take charge of your investments and stay headed on the right path

Just like in any professional field, things within certain categories have similar features. For example, you might not know how to build a car, but you know something about my car if I tell you it’s a hybrid or if it takes diesel. You might not know how to build a house, but you know something about my house if I tell you it’s either a duplex or it’s ranch style.

Similarly, there are ways to understand mutual fund’s core features by knowing just a little bit about them. This guide is a good starting point for understanding the mutual funds in your own accounts:

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Roth IRA: 6 Reasons You Should Open One Today

Roth IRAs are very popular in the press these days. There are thousands of articles that come up when you Google “Roth IRA”.  I’m sure you’ve heard of the Roth IRA, but maybe you just aren’t sure why you should open a Roth IRA. Roth IRAs don’t offer the same immediate tax benefit as Traditional IRAs and 401(k)s, so maybe you just don’t see what’s so great about the Roth IRA.

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A Roth IRA could be a valuable tool in your retirement tool kit.

The Roth IRA could likely a valuable asset to have in your financial tool kit. Here’s how the Roth IRA works: