How a Bad Investment Experience Changed My Life
Recently I had lunch with an old friend. My friend is about ten years younger than I am and is still working. He asked me a question that I had to think about. My friend wanted to know what are the most important investment lessons that I learned over my investing life. In this post I thought I would provide an answer to his question.
Are You Saving Enough for Retirement?
In recent years I have reviewed dozens of interactive online tools designed to help the user determine the appropriate savings rate to retire. After all my reviews, I think I have found the best “no cost” online tool for analyzing your retirement savings status.
Retirement Tax Diversification, Part II
In my previous post I discussed why you should pay some of your retirement taxes while working. Doing this will increase your tax diversification in retirement providing you with more control over your annual tax bill. Before I leave this subject there is one more important strategy to be aware of to optimize the current federal tax code during the early years of retirement. I believe this strategy is another way to reduce portfolio risk that could occur if we encounter higher tax rates in the future.
Retirement Tax Diversification
After my last blog post, I received a couple of questions concerning the concept of tax diversification. In this post I will discuss this topic as it relates to one of the biggest tax mistakes many future retirees make in their financial planning. It is known as “The Deferral Trap.”
How it is Possible to have $100,000 in income and Pay $0 Federal Income Taxes
It may not seem feasible for a retiree to have $100,000 in spendable income and pay zero federal income taxes, but at least for tax year 2012 it is possible. It requires no special tax shelters and just takes advantage of a few ordinary tax laws. In this post I will provide a scenario that illustrates how this can be done.
Year End Tax Planning
Recently I was doing some end of year tax planning to check that I have sent in enough estimated tax payments to the appropriate taxing authorities. In going through this analysis I take advantage of a little known recent tax law change. Since we are nearing the end of the 2011 tax year, I thought I would write about this tax law change in case there are other people who may be able to benefit from it.
Retirement Income and Portfolio Expenses
For years you have been accumulating funds for your retirement. When your retirement date finally arrives, it is time to withdraw assets to pay for the retirement phase of your life. Developing a Safe Withdrawal Rate (SWR) is the single most important decision you will make regarding your retirement assets. Before getting into SWRs I wanted to discuss the impact of portfolio expenses on retirement income.
Basic Rules of Retirement
In this holiday shortened week I thought I would write a short post on the basic rules of retirement. If you follow these simple rules, it will be difficult for you not to succeed in achieving your retirement goals.
Addressing Inflation in Retirement
My last post discussed my biggest retirement fear; the fear that the US will experience persistent high inflation at a rate much greater than the return on my retirement assets. In this post I will discuss several ways that retirees can try to mitigate this risk.
My Biggest Retirement Fear
My biggest retirement fear is related to my last post about the coming changes to government retirement benefits. If you have not read my previous post, you can click on this link and read it now. However my biggest retirement fear is not caused by the expectation that these old age retirement benefits will be cut back in some way, my real fear is that these benefits MAY NOT be cut back enough or worse yet not cut back at all.