Marriage and Money – How to Retire Without Losing Both

When someone retires in a household, there’s a lot of adjustment needed which can become a new source of stress that the marriage has never experienced before. In this show, I cover 4 issues that couples need to be on the same page about as they plan towards retirement:

1. adjusting to a fixed income

2. disagreement on spending priorities

3. different retirement visions

4. risk tolerance and investment decisions

Listen in.

5 Year-End Tax Tips

It’s hard to believe that Thanksgiving is just a week away, and as we get closer to the end of the year it’s time to be thinking about what we need to do to be tax-efficient. In this show, we cover 5 tax considerations and some of them have deadlines so pay close attention:

  1. harvesting tax losses and gains
  2. Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs)
  3. Qualified Charitable Distributions
  4. Roth IRA conversions
  5. maximize contributions to your tax-advantaged account

Should You Hire a Financial Advisor?

How do you know when it’s time to hire a financial advisor? If you know how to diagnose a financial problem but don’t know how to handle it, you might consider hiring an advisor. The engineer-types who think they can handle it all may also benefit from considering a second opinion. Interestingly enough, our firm has more engineer clients than any other type of profession.

So are you a DIYer or do you like the peace of mind of working with a professional? Listen in.

Is an Annuity Upgrade Right for You?

Historically, annuity companies do really well when interest rates are high. At the moment, interest rates are almost at the same level as in 2008. Annuities that are being offered today are much better than those offered 10 or 15 years ago, and for this reason many of our clients have benefited from an annuity upgrade recently. Does an upgrade make sense for your annuity?

We start today’s podcast with a primer on annuities (hint: we’re referring to fixed indexed annuities here) and we continue with the main reasons why upgrading an annuity might make sense.

Listen in.

Farming v. Investing for Income

When you’re headed towards retirement, you have an accumulation plan. Once you retire, you should make the shift towards a distribution plan.

Switching to investing for income can be difficult if all you’ve been doing for decades is investing for growth.

In this episode, I’m going to use a farming analogy which you might find very helpful in understanding this paradigm shift. Listen in.

Tackling the Unknown for a Stress-Free Retirement

When you’re uncertain about something, you’re going to have stress.

In this show, we’ll bring to the table 5 things that can cause more stress than necessary when preparing for retirement.

  1. health care costs
  2. inadequate investment planning
  3. no retirement income plan
  4. longevity
  5. unknown tax implications

Listen in.