Financial

Like most people, you probably save and invest throughout your working years so that you’ll be able to afford a comfortable retirement. Once you retire, you’ll want to focus on strategies to help you make the most of your retirement income — and you might want to become familiar with these ideas well before you retire. Basically, you’ll have some “must do” moves and some “think about doing” moves.

We’ve all heard about the “new retirement”, the mix of work and play that many of us assume we will have in our lives one day. We do not expect “retirement” to be all leisure. While this is becoming a cultural assumption among baby boomers, it is interesting to see that certain financial assumptions haven’t really changed with the times. In particular, there are two financial misconceptions that baby boomers can fall prey to – assumptions that ...

As another school year approaches, you may be thinking about the day in which you’ll be sending your children off to college. Can you afford to help them pay for school while still saving for your own retirement? There are many strategies to explore when saving for your retirement and your child’s education.

Among the reasons you work hard all your life may be so you can leave something to your children, grandchildren or other family members. So, naturally, you’d like to make it as easy as possible for your heirs to take possession of those assets you want them to have. And that’s why you may want to consider establishing a Transfer on Death (TOD) agreement on certain accounts. Once you’ve established a TOD agreement for your account, ownership of the assets held in that ...

Times have changed – and so have financial advisors. Today, people don’t want financial advice from a salesman. Instead, they want a relationship with a financial professional who is candid, trustworthy and thoroughly educated, who provides personalized financial consulting for each client. That search often leads them to a fee-based or fee-only financial advisor or a Registered Investment Advisor. A pleasant alternative to Wall Street. A paradigm shift is ...

Bond investing basics are simple. When you buy a bond, the bond issuer - either a government or corporation - pays you an agreed-upon rate of interest known as the coupon rate. In addition, you get your original investment back when the bond reaches a maturity date. Bonds come in many flavors: taxable and tax-exempt, long- and short-term, AAA-rated and junk, inflation-protected, fixed-rate and variable-rate. Before investing in a bond issue, you should consider several factors. ...

Bond investing basics are simple. When you buy a bond, the bond issuer - either a government or corporation - pays you an agreed-upon rate of interest known as the coupon rate. In addition, you get your original investment back when the bond reaches a maturity date. Bonds come in many flavors: taxable and tax-exempt, long- and short-term, AAA-rated and junk, inflation-protected, fixed-rate and variable-rate. Before investing in a bond issue, you should consider several factors. ...

Another reform bill is now making its way through the Senate – a bill that would reregulate the financial services industry with a few goals in mind: 1)Preventing failures of large banks and financial services firms, or at least insulating taxpayers and the economy in such an emergency 2)Creating a new financial watchdog agency to protect consumers 3)Tightening regulations on derivatives 4)Banning banks from proprietary trading (with the “Volcker Rule& ...

How do you pay down an $8 trillion debt? The Obama administration needs an answer, as the non-profit Congressional Budget Office says America’s debt could rise to $20 trillion by 2020.1 One possible answer has a very European ring to it: a VAT, or value-added tax. What are the chances of Americans paying a national sales tax?

64% of Americans have no financial strategy at all. That’s right – no plan whatsoever to build wealth or keep it. That finding comes from the 2009 National Consumer Survey on Personal Finance conducted by the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, Inc. (The survey collected data from 1,700+ U.S.