My Retirement Blog
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10 Retirement Pitfalls: Not Getting 401K Match
You like getting free money? Sure, me too, so why would anyone ever not contribute to their 401k and get their employer match? Well, there are people who do this and it’s absolutely unbelievable. If you just started working, review your benefits package to see whether your company offers an employer match on 401k contributions.…
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10 Retirement Pitfalls: Waiting
The power of compounding means that every year you wait, you don’t lose one year’s interest… you actually lose on the tail end of the compounding equation. Let’s say you have a maximum compounding interest lifespan of thirty years, starting when you’re twenty five. If you wait until you’re 26, you don’t lose interest from…
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10 Retirement Pitfalls: Putting College Ahead of Retirement
If you had to decide between saving for your children’s college fund or saving for your retirement, you might be tempted to pick college fund first. I think the main reason for that is because retirement is always such a nebulous concept anyway whereas school is very concrete, so people opt to fund something they…
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Not All Index Funds Are Equal
I just wrote up a post on Blueprint for Financial Prosperity about the differing performance returns of index funds, specifically a Vanguard and a Fidelity S&P index fund, that may be of interest to folks who invest in index funds as a component of their retirement investing strategy. The jist of it was that not…
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Starting Late: Save More, Risk Less
If you’re getting close to retirement and are a little slim on the retirement funds, do not try to compensate by ratcheting up your risk in an attempt to catch an up-swing as a means of catching up. First, don’t worry, you are hardly alone if you’re a little behind in your latter years. Second,…
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Tapping Home Equity In Retirement
That’s the subject of the latest headline from Yahoo Finance’s personal finance How-To section and it’s certainly one worth reading if you’ve been considering using the home equity you’ve built up in your home as a way to supplement your retirement income. They profile three basic strategies for tapping into home equity: downsizing into a…
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Introduction to Self-Directed IRAs
Wouldn’t it be cool to invest some of your retirement money on a movie production company? What about an apartment complex or some other non-traditional investment? Well, if you have a self-directed IRA, you’re allowed to as long as you follow some basic rules. The basic rule is that you can’t benefit from the investment…
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Working Past 65 Not Guaranteed
According to a recent survey done by Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research, employers may not be all that interested in keeping someone on after the official retirement age. Working past 65 has long been the advice of experts to those who haven’t built up a large enough nest egg to retire at the traditional…
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Retire Credit Card Debt First
If you’re struggling to decide whether to contribute funds to your retirement or pay down your credit card debt, I have some advice. Think of your retirement like you would a house and the credit card debt as a hole that’s in the middle of your property, before you can build your house you should…
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