My Retirement Blog
-
Borrowing Money To Fund Retirement
Have you considered borrowing some money to fund your retirement? I’m talking about borrowing some money, perhaps via a 0% balance transfer from a credit card, so that you can contribute more towards either a 401K or an IRA. You might be thinking that borrowing money in order to invest it is a risky proposition,…
-
These are Things Six through Ten of the Ten Things Your 401(k) Provider Will Not Tell You courtesy of those brilliant folks over at Smart Money. 6. “…but you still aren’t diversified.” One interesting tidbit out of the article was the fact that the two most popular holdings in 401(k)s are stable-value funds and company…
-
Ten Things Your 401K Provider Won’t Tell You, Part 1
I love Smart Money’s series, Ten Things Your [Insert Someone Here] Won’t Tell You, because it really opens your eyes to some of the shady practices of some operations you may otherwise think are being honest and above board. In the latest installment, Smart Money takes a look at 401K’s and the little things that…
-
Review Your 401K Plan Fees
Some companies are large enough that they have their own institutional funds to offer their employees in the 401K, some companies aren’t and thus rely on the offerings of a large brokerage house like T. Rowe Price, Vanguard, or Fidelity. Either way, it’s crucial that you review the fund fees of the funds you’re invested…
-
Your House: Not A Retirement Asset
I was surprised to read in a recent article from the Motley Fool that the the actual appreciation rate of residential real estate over a long period of time, in their study they looked at two time periods, barely beat Treasury bonds in one case and lost to T-bills in the second case. In the…
-
4% Retirement Withdrawal Rule
In yet another one of Walter Updegrave’s retirement columns, I was introduced to the 4% withdrawal rule for your 401K. Basically, the rule is based on running Monte Carlo simulations (computer simulations of the probabilities dealing with the markets) where if you withdraw only 4% of your retirement assets each year, there is an 80%…
-
Save This Much to Retire a Millionaire
Need to know how much to save in order to retire a millionaire at the age of 65? Kiplingers has a whole slew of numbers to give you some confidence that you’re either on the right track or not that far away. The only assumptions they make are that you earn 8% annually on your…
-
Freezing Pensions, Moving to 401K
More and more companies are doing what Goodyear recently announced that they would do, freeze pensions and move towards 401k’s as the standard retirement vehicle for most workers. Pensions, in general, are very expensive, as you may have surmised by the numbers Goodyear has put out for how much they would save, and employers are…
-
Money Markets Are Dangerous!
Many people have believed that cash, as an investment, is safe but it isn’t and it’s the subject of Walter Updegrave’s latest column in which he explains why cash (“invested” in traditionally safe vehicles) is risky. While Updegrave focuses on the opportunity cost aspect of it, how the money can be earning higher returns elsewhere,…
Got any book recommendations?