Did you know you are more susceptible to telephone or internet fraud the older you are? One of the most common scenarios occurs when a “scammer” calls you impersonating a grandchild - suggesting to you that the fuzzy phone connection is because of where they are, that they are afraid to tell their parents what happened, and they ask you [...]

Did you know that the average age of an annuity buyer is in their early 60s with the majority of annuities purchased by individuals between ages 55–70? According to Oxford Economics, the U.S. population aged 65 or over is expected to grow by more than 8.3 million from 2022 to 2027 and so the number of persons purchasing annuities is [...]

We’ve been asked to provide some online tools to help estimate your longevity, a topic we discussed last week. We found three we thought to share, each with varying degrees of specificity. The Social Security Administration’s Life Expectancy Calculator (sea.gov/oact/population/longevity.html) requires just two inputs: age and gender. The American Academy of Actuaries and the Society of Actuaries’ Longevity Illustrator (longevity [...]

I read an article this past week that discussed what the author said was the most important assumption of retirement planning, life expectancy. The article said experts call this the “retirement-consumption puzzle”.  While we can reasonably estimate each of our retirement income sources and dollar amounts, the one most important factor we can’t know is how long we’ll live.  The [...]

When is the right time to retire? While we know that what matters most is being prepared financially, it’s also a question that depends on your personal needs and circumstances. The National Bureau of Economic Research found that "retirement improves both health and life satisfaction" but the age at which you retire impacts the quality of your retirement. The age at [...]

Here are a few factors to consider when you choose a retirement savings plan. Roth and traditional IRAs differ when paying taxes on contributions and distributions in retirement. While both are tax advantaged accounts, your choice depends on when you want to pay taxes, now with a Roth IRA or in retirement for a traditional IRA. In addition, you must [...]

We sometimes are asked who a fixed index annuity and a variable annuity might be a good choice for and to answer that question our attention was drawn to a very simple article published by the Insurance Information Institute.  There, the author said that fixed annuities may be a good choice for conservative investors who value safety and stability, and [...]

I read an interesting article last week about a study that looked into the decline in wealth for Late Boomers and explored what may have contributed to it. “The results show that two factors were at play – a shift in the population towards lower-wealth households and, more importantly, a weakening of the link between work and wealth accumulation.”   This [...]

When we think of retirement we often focus on how much money we have in savings.  We often forget that this doesn’t necessarily mean having to deplete our savings, it means creating a retirement income plan off of those savings. Call us, we have some ideas that will enable you to obtain an income stream in retirement you can’t outlive, [...]

We often look for ways to get a solid financial footing the decade before retirement. For years we may have saved diligently and carefully followed a long-term strategy. But when market changes coincide with a short time horizon toward retirement, pre-retirees may start to question what they have done. A loss of confidence in your retirement income strategy may make [...]