This post was last updated on January 15, 2021, to reflect all updated information and best serve your needs. 

When you retire, you deserve to enjoy years of relaxation and stress-free time doing the things that make you happy with the people you love. One of the best ways to make sure this happens is by paying off your mortgage before entering your retirement years. In this article, we’ll show you the freedom that not having a mortgage in retirement brings, and we’ll also tell you how to get there.

As you begin estate planning, you will face difficult choices, further complicated by the current pandemic. However, it’s essential that you have a plan in place to protect your loved ones financially. There are many different ways you can do so. 

Today, we’re going to discuss two of them. Wills and trusts are both estate planning tools, meaning they help you control who inherits your assets after you pass away. The similarities between the two end there, though.

For many workers, the benefits package a company offers is almost as important as the salary that goes along with it. One of the benefits that workers are most interested in is the retirement plan. People want to know that they are going to be okay after they stop working, and in most cases, they are relying on their employer to help make that a reality when it comes to saving. 

Many companies offer retirement plans such as a 401(k). However, these plans can come with bureaucratic red tape and regulatory loopholes to jump through – which can make them more difficult to implement. Because of these difficulties, some companies choose to opt out of plans like 401(k)s altogether.

Planning for retirement brings forth many questions. Which type of account is best? How much should I be saving? 

Everyone’s unique situation brings a different answer. However, the more you know about planning for retirement, the better off you will be in the future. 

The idea of using life insurance as a retirement plan may seem, at best, counterintuitive. At worst, it sounds vaguely fraudulent if you’re not familiar with the intricacies of the life insurance industry. As far as most people are concerned, life insurance is there to support your family after you pass away, not to help you after you retire.  

What if you’re the beneficiary of someone else’s policy? Could you use the death benefit you receive for retirement then? Hypothetically, yes.

We all love our retirement accounts. Saving for the future gives us something to look forward to and reminds us how our hard work will pay off down the road. 

A 401(k) is one of the most popular and common types of retirement plans we have access to today.. By diverting money from our paycheck into our 401(k), the goal is to save enough so that by the time we retire, we can live comfortably without a change in lifestyle.

This post was last updated on January 20, 2021, to reflect all updated information and best serve your needs.

Full Disclosure: This article is not a get-rich-quick scheme of how to become a millionaire in no time. Rather, it's a list of sound principles and practices that you can put into place to become a millionaire at some point in your life. Becoming a millionaire and/or achieving financial independence takes discipline, hard work, and savings. I can assure you it WILL NOT happen overnight.

This post was last updated on January 15, 2021, to reflect all updated information and best serve your needs.

No matter how old you are right now, you should already be saving for retirement. Whether you're contributing to a 401(k), IRA, or other long-term investment (or all three), you have to make sure that you'll have enough money to last the rest of your life.

This post was last updated on January 15, 2021, to reflect all updated information and best serve your needs. 

For many of us, our 401(k) or similar employer-sponsored retirement plan is our primary vehicle for retirement savings. A 401(k) is a defined contribution plan meaning that our retirement benefit is determined primarily by the amount that we save and how we invest those savings. However, there is a maximum 401k contribution limit that we will cover.

This post was last updated on January 15, 2021, to reflect all updated information and best serve your needs.

A question that comes up regularly is what to do with old retirement accounts. In the old days, many workers stayed at the same employer their entire career and retired with 30 to 40 years of service.

As you transition into retirement, one of the most pressing issues to consider is applying for Social Security. Although these monthly payments probably aren’t your entire income source, they can be a vital part of your retirement budget. 

If you’re married when applying for Social Security, your spouse may also be entitled to benefits, even if he or she is not at retirement age. However, while this process is relatively straightforward for current married couples, what if you’re on a second marriage? 

For the recently widowed, there are many painful questions that have to be answered. Unfortunately, many of those questions are about money. When you should be focusing on family and saying goodbye, you instead have to deal with questions about loss of income and the decisions that need to be made. 

For widows and widowers approaching retirement, many of the money-related questions have to deal with Social Security. Because a spouse has spent his or her entire life working and paying into the system, it doesn’t seem right for it all to go to waste. Shouldn’t the widow be entitled to the Social Security benefits of the deceased?

For married couples, filing for Social Security comes with several options. Depending on the situation of the couple, there are different strategies that couples can employ to maximize their life-time benefits. We’ll cover each of these in more detail below but, for now, here is a brief overview to get you started. 

First, for couples that have a long life expectancy, the best strategy is to wait as long as possible before filing. Because waiting to file (up until age 70) increases the monthly size of your Social Security payments, a couple that expects to live a long time can earn more over the course of their retirement by waiting to file.

There are many perks to retirement, such as freedom, traveling, spending more time with friends and family, and for most, becoming Medicare eligible. Most seniors become eligible for Medicare when they reach age 65. Though, some seniors believe they do not need Medicare due to retiree or Veterans Affairs (VA) coverage. 

That is not always the case, so it’s important to know the facts when you approach your Golden Years. Here’s why you should have Medicare in retirement.

If you want to save money for retirement, you need to start doing it right now, no matter how old (or young) you are. While there are multiple methods for building a nest egg, one of the most reliable is contributing to an individual retirement account (IRA). 

There are two primary types of IRAs available - traditional and Roth. Both options have benefits and downsides, so it’s crucial to understand the differences between them. Here is what you need to know. 

As you get closer to retirement, it’s crucial to plan for every detail. While your primary concern will be whether you’ve saved enough, one element that can come into play is life insurance. 

Typically, most individuals believe that life insurance coverage is only necessary when they have dependents. However, it can be a valuable asset at any stage of life, including retirement. In this article, we’re going to outline the steps you should take to determine whether you need life insurance in retirement or not. 

If you’re saving for retirement, chances are that you are putting money away into an employer-sponsored 401(k) plan. According to a recent study by the Investment Company Institute, Americans put away over $5.8 trillion in assets in 2019. By comparison, that number was only $3.1 trillion in 2010. 

While 401(k) and 403b accounts are by far the most widely utilized saving plans, you may not be aware of the various costs and fees that come with them. In fact, if you’re like 37% of savers, you may not realize that you pay anything at all.

Every working adult will eventually want to retire, but not everyone does the proper amount of planning for that event to actually happen. Without savings and a plan in place, this happy time might actually be more stressful than necessary. If you are a few years from retirement now, it’s time to really consider what the shift into this stage of life will mean for you. 

It is completely normal to feel concerned or scared. After all, this is uncharted territory, and the unknowns are many. How will your finances change? What will the social, mental and physical differences be in your life from this point onward? 

Planning for retirement can be both exhilarating and scary at the same time. Living a worry-free retirement requires a combination of a robust investment portfolio, liquid assets, potential annuities and social security income. 

At the beginning of 2020, no one could have imagined the sudden economic downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Market volatility has naturally made many people consider postponing retirement plans because of sudden drops in the stock market that have increased investment uncertainty in retirement accounts. 

This is one of the most common questions that I am asked on a regular basis. It’s certainly a fair question and one that’s probably even gone through my head a few times.

We live in an instant gratification world – what have you done for me lately?” We expect to see the results of our saving and investing efforts immediately. While there are times you’ll actually notice faster growth within your investments because of a specific sector or company, for the most part it’s a long-term process.