News & Updates
Retirement With $5 Million
There was a recent report from the Employee Benefit Research Institute on an analysis of retirement accounts using the 2018 Survey of Consumer Finances. According to the analysis, a $5 million retirement nest egg puts you in the top 0.1% of households. Then, the question becomes: what does $5 million
New Law For 2024
If you own a small business or family office you could be required to report ownership details to the federal government… or face stiff penalties and possible jail time. The Corporate Transparency Act went into effect on January 1, 2024, and it requires otherwise unregulated companies to report information about
Estate Planning
We all know that complex estates require sophisticated estate planning. If you have a large estate or own a business, only a qualified estate-planning attorney will have the knowledge and expertise to tailor to your specific needs. Because we have been doing business with you, we may be able to
Gifts That Keep Giving
The younger a child is when you contribute to their 529 plan, the longer the account has to potentially benefit from compound growth. In 2023, individuals can contribute up to $17,000 per year (and couples up to $34,000 per year) without eating into their lifetime gift and estate tax exemption.
Pre or Post-Retirement?
Most of us think of life insurance as a way to help the people who depend on us financially, or even just to help pay the debts we may have left for our end-of-life care, funeral, or burial costs. What few of us tend to consider is the simple fact
Types of Annuities: A Rundown
We’ve been asked what a variable annuity and a fixed annuity are. What are the differences between them? Essentially: A variable annuity’s value is based on the performance of a portfolio of sub-accounts; it offers the opportunity for higher returns and greater income than a fixed annuity, but there’s also
Don’t Take the Bait
In 2022, social media-based scams cost Americans a total of $1.23 billion, a 54% increase since 2021, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Typically, these sorts of scams start with someone claiming to be a mutual acquaintance of someone you know, or relative. Then, they either ask for financial assistance,
Paying For Medicare
Friends and colleagues who are approaching 65 are beginning to ask about Medicare benefits. Not just how to sign up, but what to select from among the various choices. The good news is, 94% of Medicare beneficiaries age 65 and up are satisfied with their quality of care. The not-so-good
What is a Pension? Do You Have One?
The phrase “pension benefits” has come up a lot in recent weeks, especially during the negotiations between the United Auto Workers union and the “big three” automotive manufacturers, narrowly avoiding a strike. But for the majority of private-sector U.S. workers, pensions seem to have disappeared a long time ago. Pensions
Did You Hear?
Did You Hear? According to LIMRA, annuity sales are on the rise yet again this year, after also breaking records last year. Investors building their retirement strategy looking to mitigate some risk have chosen to lock-in annuities–How smart is this choice? Well, there’s definitely a reason they’ve been selling recently. Reach
An Email Scam Going Around
We’ve previously discussed different types of scams you should be looking out for. This week, we wanted to bring yet another one to your attention. You might get an email claiming to be from someone with the Social Security Administration, a message along the lines of “Due to suspicious illegal
An Important Warning
Did you know that the older you are, the more susceptible you are to telephone or internet fraud? One of the most common tricks scammers use is impersonating a child or grandchild, asking you for financial assistance. According to the FBI, Americans lost over $10 billion to scams last year.
When to Buy an Annuity?
The average age at which one buys an annuity is their early 60s, with the majority of annuities purchased by individuals between ages 55–70. According to Oxford Economics, the U.S. population aged 65 and up is expected to grow by more than 8.3 million from 2022 to 2027, and so
Calculating Life Expectancy
We’ve provided some online tools to help estimate life expectancy, a topic we discussed last week. We found three we thought we’d share, each with varying degrees of specificity: Go through one or all three to get an estimate. It may be able to help you with your financial retirement
The Most Important Assumption
One of the most important assumptions you will make when planning for retirement is life expectancy. While we can reasonably estimate each of our retirement income sources and dollar amounts, a crucially important variable we don’t have is how long we’ll live: Therefore, you don’t know how long exactly your
When is the Right Time to Retire?
When is the right time to retire? The answer to this, like every other decision you have to make in retirement, depends on your own personal needs and circumstances. The National Bureau of Economic Research found that “retirement improves both health and life satisfaction” but the age at which you
Key Takeaways
Here are a few factors to consider when you making your retirement income strategy: When it comes to paying taxes on contributions, Roth IRAs and traditional IRAs differ from one another. While both are tax-advantaged accounts, your choice will impact when you pay taxes on the money: With a traditional
What is the Difference?
We sometimes are asked who a fixed indexed annuity might be a good choice for, versus who might be suited to a variable annuity. And to answer that question, our attention was drawn to a very simple article published by the Insurance Information Institute (Which you can read by clicking