It’s a great idea to contribute to a Roth IRA for your child. It’s not a good idea to invent income in order to make the contribution, though.
retirement plans
Retirement Income Requirement
You know how important it is to plan for your retirement, but how do you get started? One of the first steps should be to come up with an estimate of how much income you’ll need in order to fund your retirement. Easy to say, not so easy to do! Retirement planning is not an exact science. Your specific needs will depend on your goals, lifestyle, age, and many other factors. However, by doing a little homework, you’ll be well on your way to planning for a comfortable retirement. Start With Your Current Income A rule of thumb suggests that you’ll need about 70 percent of your current annual income in retirement. This can be a good starting point, but will that figure work for you? It really all depends on how close you are to retiring, as well as what you’re planning to do while retired. If you’re young […]
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Mandatory Retirement Plans
A few weeks ago I finished a paper arguing for mandatory retirement contributions from both employers and employees. Though arguably the paper will not come close to changing public policy on retirement plans, it did raise some arguments in favor of the United States adopting a mandatory savings plan. In the paper I explained that research has shown that individuals risk not having enough saved for retirement. This could be due to employees not having a retirement plan through work or because employees face an abundance of mutual fund options in the plan that they don’t know where to begin. Some of these employees choose the default option or simply go with what a colleague recommends. Another problem the paper addresses is the declination of defined benefit pensions. Such pensions are employer sponsored and funded, thus removing funding an investment risk from the employee. At retirement the employee receives a […]
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Should You Delay Retirement?
The question of delaying retirement may arise as you get closer to your “goal year” of when you want to retire. For some individuals’ fortunate enough to be covered under a company or state pension, it can be tempting to retire as soon as possible and collect the pension benefit. The same may be true for folks wanting to start taking Social Security at age 62. Before making the decision to retire or retire early an individual should consider the effects on delaying retirement and continuing to work. This is assuming that they can accrue extra pension benefits for the extra years of service. For Social Security, this would be delaying past an individual’s normal retirement age as long as to age 70. For example, let’s say an individual has the opportunity to be eligible to retire at age 55 and receive a pension of $5,500 per month. However, if […]
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Book Review – Pension Finance
M. Barton Waring does an excellent job in his book Pension Finance. The book essentially covers what’s wrong with the way conventional accountants and actuaries think using conventional math and accounting practices to justify the payments (or lack thereof) funding corporate and municipal pensions. A concept talked about at length in the book is the idea of long-term average returns and how many pension actuaries rely on them to determine funding. Mr. Waring would argue that there is too much reliance on the long term average returns thus allowing pension actuaries to fund their pensions with less money due to assuming higher rates of return. Instead, one of the areas that may help the crippling pension system in the US is to get realistic about long term returns and use a combination of a smaller returns, and bigger contributions (among others). The book is heavy on the analytic side (great […]
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A Quick Trick to Reduce Your Tax Liability
Now that most folks are recovering from tax time there may be some individuals that paid an excessive amount of tax to Uncle Sam and are looking for ways to reduce their tax liability for next year. This post will be short and sweet, but hopefully it will drive a few points home. The best way to explain this is through an example. Let’s say that Mary and her husband Paul both work and file their taxes jointly. Their tax liability for 2013 was $4,000 – meaning that’s the amount of the check they wrote to the IRS. Needless to say, they are both looking for a potential way to reduce that liability – at least in the here and now. In this case, their marginal tax rate is 25%. The quick trick in this example is to take their tax rate which is 25% and divide it into their […]
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Are Target Date Funds Off Target?
It seems that an easy fix for saving for retirement for many folks is to simply choose a target date fund. Generally how target date funds work is a fund company will have a set of different funds for an investor to pick from depending on a best guess estimate of when the investor wants to retire. For example, an investor who’s 30 years old and wants to retire at age 65 may choose a 2045 fund or a 2050 fund. In this example since the investor is age 30 in the year 2014, 30 more years gets him to 2044. Most target date funds are dated in 5 year increments. If the investor was age 60 and wanting to retire at age 65, then he may choose a 2020 fund to correspond to his timeline. Generally, the goal of target date funds is to follow a glide path […]
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Mechanics of 401(k) Plans – Saving/Contributing
Many folks have a 401(k) plan or other similar Qualified Retirement Plan (QRP) available from their employer. These plans have many names, including 403(b), 457, and other plans, but for clarity’s sake we’ll refer to them all as 401(k) plans in this article. This sort of retirement savings plan can be very confusing if you’re unfamiliar, but it’s a relatively straightforward savings vehicle. This is the first in a series of articles about the mechanics of your 401(k) plan – Saving/Contributing. Saving/Contributing You are allowed to make contributions to the 401(k) plan, primarily in the form of pre-tax salary deferrals. You fill out a form (online most of the time these days) to designate a particular portion of your salary to be deferred into the 401(k) plan. Then, each payday you’ll see a deduction from your paycheck showing the 401(k) plan contribution. The deduction is before income tax withholding is […]
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Book Review: How Much Money Do I Need to Retire?
This book, by Todd Tresidder, cuts through much of the extra “stuff” that you find about retirement planning, to help you do some really useful, back-of-a-napkin retirement planning for yourself. Tresidder, who has a practice coaching folks with financial planning based on his concepts, developed his planning methods in real practice for himself. Tresidder “retired” from his regular job at the age of 35 using these tactics, and has been helping other folks to use these methods in planning for retirement ever since. In this book, Todd goes through the conventional methods of planning for retirement savings, which includes gathering some information that is impossible to calculate: How much money will you need every year for the rest of your life? What will be the rate of inflation? When will you die? Your spouse? What rate of growth will your investments experience over your lifetime? What will be the sequence […]
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Avoid the Trap
Eating and dining out all the time can drain our money and potential retirement savings without us even being aware of it. We get asked from friends to go to lunch, coffee or we find ourselves skipping breakfast and getting in the line at the coffee shop for a scone and latte. Before we know it, we’re left asking, “Where did the money go?” Or worse, “I can’t afford to save for retirement.” What’s happened is we’ve fallen into the trap – a habit really, but it can be broken and we can relearn. Here’s how: The first thing you can do is to pass on that latte or scone all together. Instead, make yourself breakfast at home. Invest in a coffee maker if you don’t have one, and make your own coffee. Then make a nice meal of scrambled eggs and whole wheat toast, a cup of cottage cheese with […]
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Opportunity Cost
Nearly every day in our lives we experience trade-offs and make choices affecting whether or not we’ll do something, buy something or do nothing and buy nothing. Some of us will choose to walk rather than drive, some will choose to pack a lunch rather than dine out, some of us will choose to save money while others will choose to spend it. These trade-offs are what can be referred to as opportunity costs; meaning what we’re giving up in order to take advantage of another availability opportunity. Financially, we make the choices all the time; the choice to dine out versus saving the extra money towards retirement; the choice to not save in our employer’s retirement plan so we can have more money to spend today. These opportunity costs can add up. Here’s why. When a person makes the choice to not save in order to spend for today, […]
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Book Review: The 7Twelve Portfolio
The 7Twelve Portfolio is an excellent concept for financial planners and novice investors alike. The book is very well written and easy to comprehend as Dr. Israelsen keeps the concepts simple and analogies easy to follow. The crux of the book is regarding diversification and Dr. Israelsen uses the analogy for making salsa as a reference. For example, you don’t have salsa of you just have diced tomatoes and it really doesn’t improve if you simply add some onions and salt. It improves a little bit, but still isn’t salsa. The same is true for diversification. You’re not diversified if you own one stock or bond in your portfolio and have all of your holdings in that one asset. The benefits of diversification begin when you start adding additional ingredients to the mix. This starts to lower risk and help maximize return. This is a concept us nerdy planners call correlation. The […]
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The Airplane Analogy
Many parents face the decision during their working years to try to fund both retirement and college education. Some can adequately do both while others are forced to do the best they can with what money they can save. Sometimes parents can get caught up in wanting to save as much as they can for their children’s college education and forgo the need to save for or save more for retirement. When this situation presents itself, I have given my clients my airplane analogy. It goes something like this: Have you ever flown on an airplane before? If you have you know that once you’re scrunched in and belted and the plane makes its way from the gate the flight attendants break radio silence and start with their routine flight instructions. After you’re taught where the exit rows are and how to use your seat as a floatation device they […]
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The Crystal Ball
Every so often we get asked by our clients or prospective clients which direction the market is going to go. This is always and entertaining question to get – and some of our “regulars” already know the answer. Having a bit of a sense of humor (albeit dry sometimes) I’ll joke with clients and tell them that the day they handed out crystal balls in my investment class, it was the one time I called in sick – and you only get one chance at the coveted crystal ball. Thus, I forever lost the opportunity to predict the future of the markets. Darn. Inevitably, clients laugh and understand the joke – and take away the underlying theme of the jocularity – that we can’t predict the future, especially in securities markets. But this doesn’t mean we can’t plan ahead. So why do we invest? Why do we save for retirement? […]
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Your Employer’s Retirement Plan
Whether you work as a doctor, teacher, office administrator, attorney, or government employee chances are you have access to your employer’s retirement plan such as a 401(k), 403(b), 457, SEP, or SIMPLE. These plans are a great resource to save money into, and some employers will even pay you to participate! Let’s start with the 401(k). A 401(k) is a savings plan that is started by your employer to encourage both owners of the business and employees to save for retirement. Depending on how much you want to save, you can choose to have a specific dollar amount or percentage of your gross pay directed to your 401(k) account. Your money in your account can be invested tax-deferred in stock or bond mutual funds, company stock (if you work for a publicly traded company), or even a money market account. Your choice of funds will depend on the company that […]
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The “1% More” Movement’s Going Strong! Save 1% More In Your Retirement Plans This Year
United States (Photo credit: Wikipedia) The financial blogosphere has responded with many articles recommending ways that all Americans can increase their savings rates this coming year. This has been a concerted effort by financially-oriented bloggers to help folks come up with ways to increase savings during this time of employer-benefit enrollment. We have several more bloggers who are going to put their posts up soon. See the original post for details on how to join the action: Calling All Bloggers! Listed below are the articles in our movement so far (newest are at the top): From Ken Weingarten: The 1% Challenge (Should you dare to accept) From Richard Feight: The 1% Challenge! From John Hunter: Save What You Can, Increase Savings as You Can Do So From Emily Guy Birken: Increase your savings rate by 1% From Jonathan White: Ways to increase your retirement contributions 1% in 2013 From Alan […]
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Maximizing Your Pension Using Term Life Insurance
There are many, many ways that life insurance can be used. Sometimes it is to replace lost income, when a wage earner dies during his or her working years. Other times it may be to help pay taxes on a large estate upon the passing of the second spouse in a couple, so that your heirs can receive the full fruits of your labors and won’t have to worry about a tax haircut. Another use for life insurance is to help you to maximize a pension. I know, everyone believes that pensions have gone the way of the buggy-whip. That may be the case for many folks, but I still find a lot of people retiring these days who have a traditional pension. For those of you who are familiar with pensions, you’ve probably seen the payout options that are typically available: lump sum, single life annuity, joint and 100% […]
Sterling Raskie, MSFS, CFP®, ChFC®
The latest in our Owner’s Manual series, A 401(k) Owner’s Manual, was published in January 2020 and is available on 
A Medicare Owner’s Manual, is updated with 2020 facts and figures. This manual is available on 
Social Security for the Suddenly Single can be found on Amazon at 
Sterling’s first book, Lose Weight Save Money, can be 
An IRA Owner’s Manual, 2nd Edition is available for purchase on Amazon. Click the link to choose the 
Jim’s book – A Social Security Owner’s Manual, is now available on Amazon. Click this link for the 
And if you’ve come here to learn about queuing waterfowl, I apologize for the confusion. You may want to discuss your question with Lester, my loyal watchduck and self-proclaimed “advisor’s advisor”.