Can An Annuity Be The Ideal Retirement Vehicle?

Can An Annuity Be The Ideal Retirement Vehicle?

Among all the investment products designed to help you manage your savings throughout your retirement, a single premium immediate annuity (SPIA) is unique. For a given upfront investment amount it offers retirees a guaranteed lifetime stream of payments no matter how long they live. (The italics serve to point out that the promised payments could…
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Can CalPERS Really Get A 7% Return From Stocks?

As reported in CIO magazine, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) terminated 14 out of 17 of its outside equity managers late last year and cut the allocation to outside management from over $33.6 billion to less than $6 billion. That represents a total of $181 billion in equity that will be managed in-house.…
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Did You Know That Medicare Is Means-Tested?

If you are a senior on Medicare you may have received a letter from the Social Security Administration (SSA) stating that your Medicare payments will be higher next year due to an Income Related Monthly Adjustment Amount (IRMAA). That’s because parts of Medicare insurance are means-tested. In other words the more you earn, the more…
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Understanding the New SECURE Act

Congress and President Trump just passed the bipartisan Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement (SECURE) Act as part of another spending bill needed to keep the federal government operating for a few more months. The SECURE Act represents one of the biggest changes to retirement planning since 2010, and although there are some negative…
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Are Boomers Taking On Too Much Investment Risk?

That’s what Fidelity Investments is implying in their recently-released Q3 2019 Retirement Analysis. They reported that almost 40% of 401(k) plans owned by workers born between 1946 and 1964 maintain an allocation to stocks that is higher than Fidelity’s recommended allocation for investors in those age groups. And almost one in twelve have all their…
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A Better Gift Than Just Cash For Your Teenager

Are you trying to come up with a creative gift to buy your teenage kids for the holidays this year? Or have you given up and just plan to give them cash? In either case they might qualify for an alternative gift that effectively keeps on giving for the rest of their lives: a Roth…
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