Search results for: 4% rule

EXPERTS OFTEN ARGUE that tax-avoidance strategies shouldn’t drive our financial plans, especially as Congress is forever fiddling with the tax rules. And yet many of us end up making decisions based on federal tax policy, which is loaded with incentives designed to change behavior and advance social goals.
That’s certainly true for my wife and me. Despite the tax code’s many provisions—and its 75,000 pages of complexity—four big-picture tax considerations have largely shaped how our financial lives have turned out,

Yesterday I read a recent blog post on a retirement planning site. The headline read “ Can You Live Happily in Retirement With Just 66% of Your Work Income? (Yes! Most Do)“
As you can image, that caught my eye. I went to the source of the survey at T Rowe Price. Here is what the survey said in part. 
“Living on less: Nearly three years into retirement, retirees report living on 66% of their pre-retirement income on average.

An earlier discussion on Forum nearly exhausted the debate on the percentage of pre-retirement income needed in retirement. I rarely win the argument, but I press on. 
First, my argument is not replacing income, but base salary. For me base salary was around 60% of total compensation. 
Second, being able to live on say, 50% replacement is easier the higher starting Income. After all, 50% of $300,000 a year is still a hefty amount. 50% of $80,000 working income not so much. 

I’VE ALWAYS ASSUMED my financial life wasn’t so different from that of others—and that made writing personal-finance articles a whole lot easier. I, too, wanted to own a home, buy the right insurance, pay for the kids’ college, and amass enough for a long and comfortable retirement.
On top of that, I wasn’t some financial minority—a highly paid executive, or a successful business owner, or the recipient of a hefty inheritance. Instead, I was like most everybody else,

On Fidelity.com, under “viewpoints.retirement,” one currently finds a post titled “Create Income That Can Last a Lifetime” (https://www.fidelity.com/viewpoints/retirement/income-that-can-last-lifetime). At the end of that post, there is a note on “RMDs and annuities,” which states, in part, the following:
The SECURE Act 2.0 that went into effect in January 2023 allows IRA income annuity owners the choice to aggregate their income annuity with their other IRAs for the purposes of determining their required minimum distributions. If you are 73 and older,

IS A 55-PLUS community for you? Do you want to spend your later years surrounded by folks just like yourself—mostly crotchety, demanding old people?
I’m joking, of course. But am I exaggerating?

My wife Connie and I made the move from our New Jersey single-family home to a nearby 55-plus community six years ago. Like the idea of a 55-plus community? Here are some factors to consider.

First, a 55-plus community requires defining. There are several types and sizes,

I’m not big on aphorisms—at least when talking to others. But there are certain things I say to myself all the time. Like what? Here are four mantras that I repeat to myself on an almost daily basis:
“First, do what you have to do, then do what you want to do.” This is my vegetables-first approach to the day. I have an ongoing to-do list that I typically revise each evening. When I look at that list in the morning,

First a question and then the backstory.
Mid-60’s and nearing retirement with 80% domestic allocation of stocks (60% domestic/40% international) in tech heavy QQQ. Sold 20% of my shares yesterday, and now have $200k+ to reinvest. Tax basis is 13% of the current market price. Long term capital gain rate of 15% applies, plus 3.8% NIIT. Gain is $192.5k.
How would you reinvest the sales proceeds to slowly sell off this concentrated QQQ position in a taxable account?

I VIVIDLY REMEMBER my father explaining how small sums of money could grow exponentially. Using the example of a penny that doubled every day for a month, he showed how it could grow to more than $10 million. Indeed, as Albert Einstein didn’t say, “The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest.”
Many authors tout the benefits of saving beginning at a young age. Radio personality Dave Ramsey and his daughter Rachel Cruze,

YOU COULD CALL ME a 529 superfan. The college savings plans helped me put my two kids through college. Their state and federal tax advantages cut the exorbitant cost of college just enough so we didn’t have to borrow for our two kids’ education.
Which makes it surprising that I knew the man who created the 529 plan—but I didn’t realize he’d fathered them.
I covered Senator Bob Graham of Florida as a newspaper reporter in Washington in the 1990s,

EVERY TIME I READ about the decline in traditional defined-benefit pension plans, and the rise and supposed failure of 401(k) plans, I get annoyed.
You’d think all Americans once had good pensions that provided a secure retirement. That isn’t—and never was—true. Barely half of American workers ever had a pension and many of those received little value from them because their job tenure was too short. Job tenure has long averaged some four years or so.

I’M NOT A GENEROUS guy. Which brings me to tipping.
I see a price on the menu, and I’m willing to spend that amount on the food. Then I have to spend additional money, after having consumed that food, because someone served it to me. Why?
What about the kitchen staff who cooked my meal? Should I tip them also? After all, I can’t cook, so the kitchen staff is doing me a more important service than the person who carries my food to the table.

I HAD LUNCH RECENTLY with a longtime friend—a 66-year-old retiree. I asked him how he’s generating income since he hasn’t filed for Social Security and doesn’t have a pension.
He said that, for now, he’s just drawing down his savings. I know his wife is three years older and her lifetime earnings were much lower than his, so I asked him if she’d filed for Social Security. He proudly said that she hadn’t—because she expects to live to age 90,

YALE UNIVERSITY economist Robert Shiller, in his book Narrative Economics, argues that storytelling has more of an impact on economic events than we might imagine. It might seem like the financial world ought to be driven by facts and data, and yet stories often take on a life of their own.
For instance, financial narratives often play a key role in stock market bubbles and busts. More generally, financial myths and misperceptions are widespread,