Boomerang Children and Retirement Savings

Do you currently have an adult child living at home?  Maybe your child just graduated and is weighed down by college loans, or maybe your child just lost his/her job and needs some help figuring out what’s next.  Adult children return home for a number of different reasons and, for the most part, parents want to help.  While it’s very common for parents to help their adult children financially, there’s one question they must consider: How will this support affect my retirement savings?  Without proper planning and open communication, financial support of a boomerang child could quickly drain your retirement fund. 

Life Insurance Policies: Children and Grandchildren

Have you ever wondered how to help secure the financial future of your children or grandchildren beyond college expenses?

Fewer companies are offering pensions, with the share of Fortune 500 companies that provide them to new hires falling to 24 percent at the end of 2013 from 60 percent in 1998. Only 7 percent of employers offer new employees traditional pensions, which pay out a certain amount at retirement based on a worker’s pay and how long they stayed with a company. (1)

What Phase Of Retirement Are You In?

Hang up the work clothes, turn off the alarm clock and forget about those “back-to-work blues.”  You made it: welcome to retirement.  While many people view retirement as an event, we like to think of it as a process that includes several different stages or “stops” along the way.  Depending on what stage you find yourself in, your feelings towards retirement may vary a great deal.  In fact, according to researcher Robert Atchley, retirement can be broken down into six distinct phases; two of which we will discuss in this post: The Honeymoon Phase and the Disenchantment Phase.

When It Comes to Retirement Planning, One Size Does Not Fit All Part 1: The Safe Withdrawal Rate

An involuntary shift is taking place with the gradual extinction of defined benefit pensions: the individual is being thrust unwittingly into the role of retirement planner. As a firm that specializes in retirement planning, we have been cautioning clients for years about the dangers this represents. Foremost among them is the lack of training and education obtained by most who now must depend on themselves to tackle topics as broad as investment management, risk assessment and management, tax planning and economics, to name but a few.

What's In Your Retirement Plan? The Four Buckets Strategy

We’ve all seen the popular Capital One credit card commercials that always end with the same question: “What’s in your wallet?”  In the same way, I like to ask an equally important question: “What’s in your retirement plan?”

When considering this question, I’m reminded of a conversation I recently had with a couple who came to our office.  They asked if they could simply retain us and pay us by the hour, as opposed to having us manage their investments.  They went on to explain that the reason they didn’t want us to manage their investments was because they wanted to maintain the ability to pull their money out at any given time.