If you have saved and invested consistently for retirement, you may find yourself ready to leave work on your terms – with abundant free time, new opportunities, and wonderful adventures ahead of you. The thing to keep in mind is that the reality of your...
Generalizations about money & retirement linger. Some have been around for decades, and some new clichés have recently joined their ranks. Let’s examine a few. “When I’m retired, I won’t really have to invest anymore.” Many people see retirement as an end instead of a beginning...
How well off do you think you are financially? If your career or life takes an unexpected turn, would your finances hold up? What do you think will become of the money you’ve made and saved when you are gone? These are major questions, and most...
To start, ask each other what you see yourselves doing in retirement – individually as well as together. Is the way you are saving and investing conducive to those dreams? Think about whether you are making the most of your retirement savings potential. Could you save...
What kind of retirement do you think you’ll have? An outstanding one? A depressing one? What if it all starts with your outlook?Qualitatively speaking, what if the success or failure of your retirement begins with your perception of retirement? A whole field of study has emerged...
A first-world problem, and nothing more? Not quite. Getting rich quick can be liberating, but it can also be frustrating. Sudden wealth can help you resolve anxieties about funding your retirement or your children’s college educations, and newfound financial freedom can lead to time freedom...
Why sell shares when you can gift them? If you have appreciated stocks in your portfolio (and you hold them in a non-qualified account that doesn’t get special tax treatment), then you might want to consider donating those shares to charity rather than selling them...
Do its risks offset its advantages? Has high-frequency trading made things better on Wall Street, or worse? It has its adherents and detractors. What does HFT amount to – a lurking danger, a market necessity, a hidden tax on the small investor, a net plus? Frankly,...
A varied portfolio is a hallmark of a savvy investor. You may be amused by the efforts of some of your friends and neighbors as they try to “chase the return” in the stock market. We all seem to know a day trader or two: someone...
If the fiscal cliff is averted, stocks may have all kinds of reasons to rise. What if the future is more bullish than the bears assume? With 2013 approaching, stock market volatility seems to have increased. Equities rise on optimistic remarks about a fiscal cliff solution,...