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Will Social Security Be There When You Retire?

By Kevin M


It’s become almost fashionable these days to talk about the impending bankruptcy of Social Security, as if its demise is all but a done deal. But is that even the case? And how should we plan for what ever we might expect to get from the system when our turn at retirement comes along?

Let me state at the outset that I’m not a blind optimist cheering on the “company line” about Social Security as if dark clouds weren’t looming on the horizon. The fiscal ship that is 21st Century America is not an enviable one and the bill will certainly come due either gradually (let’s hope) or suddenly, but either way Social Security is likely to be there in the future—in some form or fashion.


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Over 50 – No Pension, No 401K – What Now?

By Kevin M

Let’s be honest, most retirement posts in the personal finance blogging world are aimed squarely at people in their 20s and 30s. Those over 50 are presumed to not exist. It’s almost ironic, isn’t it, talking about retirement to people who are so far away from retirement that it’s very nearly irrelevant while ignoring those for whom it’s right around the corner?

Maybe it’s that the vast majority of people on the web are under 35, or maybe it’s just easier making multi-decade projections to a group of people so far from retirement that they’ll never remember any bad advice they’d gotten early in life. And in a different direction, all things are possible when your time horizon is 30, 40 or 50 years. Those magical retirement projections that’ll turn us all into millionaires just wouldn’t work without all those decades!

But what if you don’t have decades to accumulate a retirement fortune? What if you’re over 50 and retirement is just a few years away? If you don’t have at least a healthy six figure portfolio, how do you prepare for retirement now that the luxury of time is no longer available to work in your favor?


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Save for Retirement Now or Payoff Your Mortgage First?

By Kevin M

Two of the most important components of retirement planning are a generous retirement savings plan and a mortgage free home. But if limited resources force you to make a choice, which goal should get the lion’s share of your extra income?

There are three basic choices:

1) Emphasize retirement and let the mortgage slowly amortize itself into extinction
2) Throw all extra funds at the mortgage, and once it’s paid you’ll have even more money to put into retirement
3) A hybrid plan where you try to do both at the same time

This isn’t a good solution-bad solution debate. There are plusses and minuses no matter which way you go, and fortunately all three can get us where we need to go. Which one we choose will depend largely on individual circumstances and preferences.


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Good Retirement Planning Should Include a Low Cost/Debt Free Lifestyle

Low Cost/Debt Free lifestyle as part of retirement planning

Kevin M

Most articles on the subject of retirement planning focus completely on growing tax sheltered retirement savings plans like 401k’s and IRA’s. It’s an effort to build a large capital base as a way of creating a strong retirement income to enable us to maintain the lifestyle we’ve become accustomed to during the course of our lives.

Few pundits ever deal with the flip side of that effort—establishing a low cost/debt free lifestyle early in life. For a generation addicted to McMansions, late model cars, eating out, vacations at five star resorts and the like, no amount of money salted away may ever be enough.


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Will A Million Dollars be Enough to Retire On?

By Kevin M

A million dollars was a lot of money when I was a kid. Inflation notwithstanding, for most of us, it still is! It’s an amount the vast majority of people will never have in their bank accounts or anywhere else in their possession.

Yet it’s practically a MINIMUM if you plan on enjoying the textbook full retirement.

Think about all of the retirement scenarios laid out for us in the financial universe; at the heart of nearly every one of them is a big, fat 401k with a seven figure balance to keep us pampered and well provided for in our golden years.


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