I recently was asked an interesting question by a church friend concerning his elderly mother. Like many of us, he is a ‘boomer’ and has an 85-year-old mother who currently lives in an assisted-care facility. Her expenses are being paid for by Social Security, a military survivors pension, and long-term care (LTC) policy. Her living … Read more
In Investing for Retirement – Parts One and Two, I introduced a ‘framework’ for investing for retirement and discussed different asset types and holding options, and also active versus passive management styles. Once you make those decisions (or have some idea what you want to do), you’ll need to decide how you want to implement them. … Read more
This is the second article in a three-part series about investing for retirement. In the first article, I discussed the various types of assets you could hold as investments. In this article, I’m going to look at the different ways you can invest in them and different management styles (active versus passive.) The better you … Read more
If you have followed this blog for very long, you may have noticed that I don’t write much about investing. There are several reasons for that, not the least of which is that I am not a professional financial advisor and I’m not qualified to make recommendations to other people about how to invest their … Read more
One of the ways we practice wise retirement stewardship is by making good use of the tax-advantaged savings plans at our disposal. Tax-deferral is a gift of God’s common grace that we can all take advantage of here in the U.S. (Psalm 145:9). As our savings earn interest and dividends and increase in value, we … Read more
You know the old saying, “The only things that are certain in life are death and taxes.” Yes, taxes are a reality – before, during, and even after retirement. But honestly, I don’t think or worry too much about taxes until tax time. Then I download a copy of TurboTax and go to work. My … Read more
I was recently reading an article in Forbes magazine titled, “Can You Handle the Truth About Retirement?” It was enlightening but frankly also a little depressing. The author lists things like, “after you retire, the only guarantee is that you will die” (a true statement, but just a tad morbid, I think); “problems don’t go … Read more
This article is the third and final one in my series about Financial Advisors. If you read the first two, you hopefully have a better understanding of what advisors do, where they do it, and how they are compensated. So in this article I am going to cut to the chase: Do you need an … Read more
In the last article, I discussed the different types of financial advisors and the various settings they work in. In this article, I go into how financial advisors are compensated and what that means to you, should you choose to work with one. In the third and final article in this series, I will discuss … Read more
