Catching Up on Retirement Saving If you are starting at or near 50, consider these ideas. Do you fear you are saving for retirement too late? Plan to address that anxiety with some positive financial moves. If you have little saved for retirement at age 50 (or thereabouts), there is still much you can do to generate a fund for your future and to sustain your retirement prospects. Contribute and play catch-up. This year’s standard contribution limit for an IRA [...]
A Retirement Gender Gap Why a middle-class woman may end up less ready to retire than a middle-class man. What is the retirement outlook for the average fifty-something working woman? As a generalization, less sunny than that of a man in her age group. Most middle-class retirees get their income from three sources. An influential 2016 National Institute on Retirement Security study called them the “three-legged stool” of retirement. Social Security provides some of that income, retirement account distributions some [...]
Retirement Plans for Individuals & Businesses A look at some of the choices. Households are saving too little for the future. According to one new analysis, 41% of Gen Xers and 42% of baby boomers have yet to begin saving for retirement. In a recent financial industry survey, 35% of small business owners said they were planning to use the sale proceeds from their company for a retirement fund, an idea which comes with a flashing question mark.1,2 Do you [...]
Is a Home an Investment? From one perspective, the answer is yes; from another, no. When you buy a home, are you investing? If you buy it to flip it or buy it as a rental property, the answer is yes. If you buy a home simply to live in it, the answer may be no. Your home is an expression of your lifestyle, a wonderful setting for your life, and a place you can enjoy in privacy and comfort. [...]
Retiring Before 60 If that is your dream, explore whether these steps could be useful to take. How could you retire in your fifties by choice? You will need abundant retirement savings and ways to access your retirement assets that lessen or avoid early withdrawal penalties. You may also need to have other, sometimes overlooked, components of retirement planning in place. There are ways to tap retirement savings accounts before 60. True, the I.R.S. discourages this with 10% penalties [...]
