My Retirement Blog

My Retirement Blog

  • Planning For Retirement At Any Age

    The “Retirement and Planning Center” at Yahoo Finance has a great article from USA Today that outlines a retirement strategy for every age group – 20 to 29, 30 to 39, 40 to 49, and 50 to 59. As expected, the younger you are the more aggressive (emphasis on growth) they recommend you be and…

  • When Should I Collect Social Security?

    Gerri Willis’ Top Tips column (wasn’t it Five Tips?) recently tackled the subject of when you should collect social security and what I gathered from her advice was that it depends. You can start collecting social security when you hit the age of 62 and you must start collecting it when you hit full retirement…

  • 401K Automatic Enrollment Legal Issues Resolved (Maybe)

    One of the reasons why employers haven’t automatically enrolled employees into retirement plans is because they didn’t want to be liable in the event that the investments the employers chose performed poorly. Well, in proposed regulations by the Department of Labor last month, employers won’t have the worry as long as they offer these three…

  • Withdrawing Funds from an Individual Retirement Accounts

    Just to clear things up a little bit, an IRA is actually called an Individual Retirement Arrangement, not an Individual Retirement Account, but everyone calls it an Individual Retirement Account so that’s why I call it that. I’m not usually a stickler for such things and I don’t really care what anyone calls it as…

  • Inflation and Your Retirement Portfolio

    While you’re still gainfully employed, inflation wasn’t never really much of a concern because you always figured it would be taken care of by your annual salary increases (which on the whole is generally true). However, once you enter retirement and begin drawing down your retirement assets, inflation becomes a much more significant issue because…

  • Roth IRA Contribution Limits and Income Phaseout Schedule

    The Roth IRA contribution limits are: Year 49 And Under 50 And Over 2005 $4,000 $4,500 2006-7 $4,000 $5,000 2008 $5,000 $6,000 As you can see, if you’re over 50 then you’re given a “catch-up” contribution. The income phaseout schedule is based on your modified adjusted gross income, which is your income minus some deductions.…

  • How Much Income Do You Need In Retirement?

    Conventional wisdom says that all your retirement income sources should generate 70% of what your pre-retirement income is, so if you lived off $100,000 then you’ll need $70,000 each year in retirement. That advice is good as a rule of thumb but there are many special factors that should increase that number including health and…

  • Vanguard Retirement Funds

    Whether you’re in retirement or forty five years away from retirement, Vanguard has a retirement fund for you. Vanguard has been known as an excellent brokerage with fantastic funds because of their low fees (the only thing you can guarantee in the stock market, that Vanguard will take a smaller piece of your pie than…

  • Beyond 401(k) & Roth IRAs

    The maximum you can contribute to your 401(k) is $15,000 and the maximum you can contribute to a Roth IRA is $4,000 – so where should you put your money afterwards? Well, my personal opinion is that if you’re able to save $19,000 towards retirement and are still eligible to contribute to a Roth IRA…

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