My Retirement Blog
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10 Rules: Starting Early
The first rule in the series of ten towards building wealth is probably the most important tip of the ten and it’s the one that every young professional should take to heart, even if they don’t really want to worry about retirement in forty years: start early. Not much else to it! The tip compares…
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Retirement Tips from the IRS
If I told you that the Internal Revenue Service had retirement tips, I bet you wouldn’t believe me would you? Well, in fact they do have retirement tips and while many of these tips are common sense and quite basic, it never hurts to review those basics to make sure you haven’t forgotten something. Set…
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Don’t Borrow From Your 401(k)
One of the often quoted “nice things” about a 401(k) is the fact that you can borrow from your 401(k) up to $50,000 or 50% of it’s current assets. What’s nice about that is the fact that while you do pay interest, you’re paying it to yourself so it is in effect an interest free…
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Pay Debt Or Save For Retirement?
Should you pay down your debt or save away for retirement? It’s a tricky question and it all depends on what kind of debt you’re talking about and what kind of retirement funds you’re contributing to. Let me illustrate this with two different examples. John Smith has lived a very lavish lifestyle and is now…
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What Is A Highly Compensated Employee?
A highly compensated employee is a construct of retirement plans and it’s used to determine if a retirement plan is biased towards these highly compensated employees. Those plans that are biased lose favorable tax advantages for those retirement programs, those that demonstrate that they are not biased towards these highly compensated employees will qualify for…
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Reasons To Take The Lump Sum
When it comes time to cash out your retirement, it usually comes down to a decision of whether you want to take a lump sum or income for life (or a mix of both). Here are some reasons why you should consider a lump sum. 1. You can control your investments If you take the…
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Top 5 Mistakes in 401(K) Investing
Laura Rowley, one of my favorite Yahoo! Finance columnists, posted a list of the top five mistakes of 401(k) on Friday and I wanted to take a closer look at some of them. Mistake #1: Failure To Enroll In An Employer’s Plan Whenever I hear one of my friends tell me that they aren’t participating…
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Writing a Retirement Plan
Having a retirement plan is critical if you want to be able to ensure that the funds you’ve allotted for your retirement will be able to fund what you’d like to enjoy during retirement. Basically what you’ll need to do is to evaluate how much income your current retirement assets are projected to provide for…
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Max Out Your 401(K) As Early As You Can
In my first two years of full-time employment, I contributed the maximum amount to my 401(k) plan because I still had the college mentality. I wasn’t used to making money and as such I wasn’t used to spending it, so in a very miserly fashion I jacked up my 401(k) contribution so that my annual…
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