You enter your income, expenses, investments and liabilities into your favorite retirement planner. You click a button, the software does some kind of calculation, and out pops a single number. It may be 87%. Maybe it’s 72%. Or it could be 15%. Whatever the number, you’re told it represents your retirement plan’s “Chance of Success.”…
There are a lot of good reasons to hold cash, especially for those in retirement. An emergency fund is a must. And retirees need to keep a certain amount of cash for spending since paychecks have stopped or been reduced. Whatever the reason, the big question is where can earn the most interest on your…
TL;DR Retirees have up to three types of accounts to draw from in retirement: traditional retirement accounts, Roth retirement accounts, and taxable accounts. Each account type is taxed differently. By choosing which accounts to draw from each year, retirees have the flexibility to manage when they’ll pay taxes and how much they’ll pay. The traditional…
Many in retirement seek investments with high income. Whether interest, dividends, or both, retirees value the ability to spend income from a portfolio without the need to sell shares of the investment that generates the income. This sentiment was reflected in an email I received from a viewer of my YouTube channel: “How about a…
Series I Savings Bonds rates increased this month. The unadjusted CPI-U rose from 301.836 in March 2023 to 307.789 in September 2023. As a result, the Inflation Rate on I Bonds increased to 3.97% in November 2023. At the same time, the fixed rate jumped from 0.90% to 1.30%. This represents the highest fixed rate…
Robo-Advisors promise to make investing easy at a very low cost. Investors have taken notice. According to one estimate, automated investing platforms will manage nearly $1.5 trillion by the end of the year. With dozens of options, however, picking the best robo-advisor can be overwhelming. To help, I examined about two dozen robos and narrowed…