The Complete Retirement Planner Blog

Health Savings Accounts (HSA's) are becoming more widely used as people discover all of the benefits that they have to offer. No doubt, the continually rising cost of health care is also helping to push people to research the best options for paying for it all, both for pre-retirement, and, especially, for post-retirement. While health care expenses will vary greatly from person to person, and even from year to year, these accounts can be used at any age and actually offer the greatest advantages when you think long term (more on this below). However, before we get into the many...

It's one thing to plan for retirement by saving diligently year after year, but quite another to shift your focus to how much of those savings you will need to actually spend each year once you retire. Essential bills will always need to be paid no matter how much you are able to reduce expenses, and seeing your savings balance decline instead of increase can cause a bit of a shock. The immediate question then becomes, "How much can I withdraw each year and still not run out of money?". There's no shortage of articles offering advice about solving that...

As you create a financial plan, major concerns about how much to save, how much you will be able to withdraw from savings each year, how long will your savings last, etc. often take center stage. One consideration that doesn't get as much attention is how much of your savings should be kept in cash. Before you retire, a common rule of thumb is to always have at least six months expenses in cash. This is mainly to help protect you if you should lose your job, or incur significant unexpected expenses. But is this enough after you retire?The good...

A simplified approach to retirement planning revolves around projecting your annual expenses, and then multiplying that amount by 20-25 years to come up with a savings goal. Creating an accurate and itemized list of all expenses expected during retirement is an essential step in responsible financial planning, but the idea of simply multiplying that total by 25 years to arrive at a savings goal is seriously lacking on many levels.  Even if you figure out the optimal savings needed (always use a large margin of error when trying to predict the future), is running out of money in your 90th...

There are countless articles written every day offering insights and advice about financial/retirement planning. With so much information available you would think that anyone interested in reading those articles could easily become an expert (near expert?) on the subject. The problem - and I'm sorry to say this - is that many of the people writing those articles are hardly well informed on the subject. Many have no financial credentials and are just piecing together random quotes from their sources and presenting generalizations and half-truths as "rules" and best practices to follow. They may have good intentions, but it makes...