My Retirement Blog
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Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities for Inflation Protection
If you’re worried about inflation and worried about traditional inflation-busting investments (the stock market, since inflation risk should be priced into the market price of shares), you might want to give Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities, or TIPS, a look. TIPS are simply treasury bonds that make adjustments because of the rate of inflation. The coupon rate…
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401(k) Always Taxed Short Term Capital Gains
401(k)’s are a great retirement investment vehicle. The two primary benefits of a 401(k) is that your employer will often give you some sort of small percentage match on your contribution and you get an immediate tax deduction for the amount you contribute. When your employer kicks in an employer match, that’s like automatic appreciation.…
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How To Estimate Retirement Spending
If you’ve been reading about retirement number estimation, you probably have heard that the experts recommend you estimate your retirement spending at around 70-90% of your current salary. The problem with using 70-90% is that: That’s a huge range. Rules of thumb work for the masses, tailor it to your own situation. Since when was…
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A Realistic Retirement Number
There’s been a lot of talk about finding one’s “retirement number,” how much you need to save before you can reasonable retire and still maintain a close standard of living. People throw out rules of thumb like the 4% withdrawal rule and the like but is that really the answer? Walter Updegrave recommends working backwards…
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Get A Raise? Increase Your Retirement Contribution!
Did you get a raise this year? If so, congratulations on your hard work. Now I have a suggestion for that money that you probably didn’t think of when you received the check. I recommend that you increase your retirement contributions, whether it’s a 401(k), a 403(b), or something else; by a half percent or…
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Taxable Brokerage Accounts for Retirement
There are a lot of retirement options out there, so many that your head probably spins whenever someone talks about 401(k)’s, 403(b)’s, Roth IRAs, or Traditional IRAs… the list goes on. One topic that most people don’t talk about is saving part of your nest egg in a regular taxable brokerage or mutual fund account.…
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Seven Recession Proof Retirement Cities
Smart Money did the smart money move of linking retirement and fear of a recession and picked out seven cities that they deemed were recession proof. The first two cities were buoyed by a large university presence but the remainder were solid for non-recession reasons as well. For example, Pittsburgh was cited as number four…
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Introducing Retirement Plan Redundancy
Retirement planning is hard enough, trying to understand someone else’s retirement plan is even harder. Now try understanding someone else’s retirement plan for you. You would think that more people would not trust their retirement in the hands of anyone else, even if they loved them, but plenty of people do whenever they don’t become…
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Special Credit Card Offers for Seniors
Smart Money, after reviewing special bank offers for seniors, took a crack at special credit card offers for seniors but the results were disappointing. With bank offers, you can tailor services to meet the needs of seniors. Lower or eliminate the fees in return for a direct deposit, such as from a 401k disbursement or…
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