My Retirement Blog
-
Are You Using a Roth IRA?
While question 3 of 4 is titled “Are you grabbing every tax break you can?“, it’s really just asking you whether you’re contributing to a Roth IRA. A Roth IRA is a retirement account that grows tax-free, your contributions are post-tax dollars but your earnings and disbursement are never taxed. This differs with a 401k…
-
Are You Keeping Track of Retirement Progress?
This is question 2 of 4 of Money Magazine’s questions and this one is just as important as question number 1. Why should you keep track of your retirement progress? To make sure you are still on track and so you can make any course corrections you may deem necessary. Rebalancing is a very important…
-
Are You Maxing Out Your 401K?
This is question number one in Money Magazine’s four questions you have to answer to get on track for retirement. A very telling graphic is the one where they show you how much you’ll have in retirement if you start maxing out at what age. If you start when you’re 30, given 10% annual growth,…
-
Ben Stein Talks Retirement Series
Ben Stein, one of my favorite columnists on Yahoo! Finance, put together a series of three videos discussing retirement planning and it’s available on YouTube. The videos were issued by the National Retirement Planning Coalition (NRPC), and “Ben gives an easy-to-understand overview on how Americans can prepare financially for retirement ? from tips on selecting…
-
Think You Don’t Make Enough To Save?
Check out the latest edition of Millionaire in the Making, it features a couple with a combined income of $86,000 who managed to save $100,000 in their 401(k) and $50,000 in IRAs. So, how do they do it? Make It Automatic – Amy uses auto-deductions to put $10,000 a year away in her 401(k), taking…
-
Reverse Mortgages: Proprietary Reverse Mortgages
These kinds of reverse mortgages are a lot like Home Equity Conversion Mortgages in that you can do whatever you want with the money, but they differ in who offers them – these are offered by private companies and are really private loans. Again, more expensive than the single purpose reverse mortgage, but in turn…
-
Save Early, Save Often = Retire Rich
If you wanted to retire in 40 years on $5,000 a month (2007 dollars), how much would you have to save each month right now? The answer may surprise you.
-
Reverse Mortgage: Home Equity Conversion Mortgages
Home Equity Conversion Mortgages are another name for federally-insured reversed mortgages and they’re backed by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. HECMs are generally more expensive than other loans, have higher up front costs and are generally worse in terms of cost if you leave your home soon after security in the reverse…
-
Reverse Mortgage: Single Purpose Reverse Mortgage
A single-purpose reverse mortgage is one of the three main types of reverse mortgages and they are offered by state and local government agencies and non-profit organizations. The benefits of single purpose reverse mortgages are that it’s generally very cheap in terms of costs but they’re not available everywhere and can only used for the…
Got any book recommendations?