Many older people say they “don’t want to be a burden” on their families. And yet, by not making a handful of key decisions and not completing the associated paperwork, they are leaving themselves vulnerable to the very
Continue Reading
May 25, 2017
Jenny Migdal, CFP®
As a financial planner, one of my responsibilities is to keep up with legislative changes and their effects on clients. Estate planning is an area where change is so frequent — and so confusing — it’s a challenge to stay
Continue Reading
There are countless important decisions to make as you get older. Many of them have a financial focus—how much to withdraw from the nest egg you’ve built, when to take Social Security, how to pay for healthcare and the
Continue Reading
In the January issue of the SMI newsletter, we ran an article that recommended taking a “fiscal health day.” The idea is to take a day off from work to catch up on your financial chores and tackle all of those
Continue Reading
Several years ago, when New York Times personal-finance writer Ron Lieber was furloughed for a few days, he responded in true personal-finance expert fashion. By devoting one of his unpaid days off to taking care of a list
Continue Reading
There are turning points in life that prompt important financial decisions. What you choose to do — or not do — at such times can have a significant impact on your long-term financial well-being. The death of a spouse is
Continue Reading
When you think of estate planning documents, certainly wills and trusts come to mind. But two other planning instruments are also important: titles and beneficiary designation forms.
Estate planning essentials
The
Continue Reading
March 27, 2015
Eric J. Reinhold, CFP®, MBA
Once you reach retirement and begin drawing from the storehouse of wealth you’ve worked so hard to accumulate, two questions arise.
First, how much can you withdraw each year without running the risk of depleting your
Continue Reading
More than any other document, a will puts you in touch with your mortality. Perhaps that’s why more than 60 percent of adults in the U.S. don’t have a will!
However, if you care about what happens to your property after
Continue Reading
You may remember me writing early this summer about a recent survey in which 100% of economists had agreed that interest rates would rise over the following six months:
It’s not that I disagreed with the conclusion — to
Continue Reading
