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WHEN POLITICAL parties set aside partisan bickering and agree on an issue, it’s worth taking note. Such was the case last week when the House of Representatives voted 417–3 in favor of a bill known as the SECURE Act. This legislation would represent the most significant set of changes to retirement rules in more than a decade.
Why the sudden bipartisan cooperation? For better or worse, both parties recognize that a growing number of Americans face a retirement crisis.
FOLKS USED TO SAY, “You can’t go wrong with real estate.” They sure don’t say that anymore. It’s been a rollercoaster dozen years for home prices—and some experts think another rough patch is in the offing.
Since mid-2006, the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index first tumbled 27.4% and then bounced back 53.6%, for a cumulative 12-plus year gain of 11.5%, equal to 0.9% a year. Could we be facing another dip?
JORDAN PETERSON, a Canadian clinical psychologist and professor at the University of Toronto, has thundered onto the cultural scene, thanks in large part to his book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. I began reading with healthy skepticism, but quickly became a fan.
Not that the doctor and I agree on all points. But the book immediately confronted my intellectual laziness in a careful but unavoidable way.
LOOKING TO IMPROVE your money management? Here are 31 rules for the financial road ahead:
1. Check your retirement progress by taking your nest egg and applying a 4% annual portfolio withdrawal rate, equal to $4,000 a year for every $100,000 saved. Will you have enough retirement income—or should you be saving more?
2. Don’t automatically claim Social Security at age 62. It often makes sense to delay benefits so you get a larger monthly check,
IF YOU OWN A STOCK in a taxable account that falls in value, you can take some of the sting out of that loss by selling your shares, realizing a capital loss and then using that loss to reduce your annual tax bill. A good idea? Problem is, selling means giving up any chance of making back the loss.
Many folks aren’t keen to do that, so they often look to buy back the shares.
IF YOU MAKE REGULAR annual contributions to a Roth IRA, you can withdraw those contributions at any time with no taxes or penalties owed. It’s a different story, however, with the account’s investment gains.
Those gains will be subject to both income taxes and tax penalties if you withdraw them within the first five years and if you are under age 59½ (or, to put it another way, you need to wait five years and until after age 59½ for the account’s growth to be totally tax-free).
BY THE LATE 1990s, with almost two decades of robust investment returns under their belts, investors would talk about 6%, 8% and even 10% as a reasonable rate at which to draw down a retirement portfolio. But researchers begged to disagree—and the financial markets provided brutal confirmation, hitting stock investors with back-to-back bear markets in 2000–02 and 2007–09.
Today, 4% is considered a safe withdrawal rate (though even that number has been called into question).
ONE RULE OF THUMB suggests that, to retire in comfort, you need 80% of your preretirement income. Why the 20% drop? You are no longer saving 10% or so every year toward retirement and you’re no longer making an employee’s 7.65% payroll-tax contribution to Social Security and Medicare. In addition, you won’t have to buy work clothes or pay commuting costs. Your income tax bill should also go down, in part because a portion of your retirement income will likely come from Social Security benefits,
HOW LONG WILL IT take to double your money, given a particular rate of return? You can get a rough answer by dividing 72 by the annual return. For instance, if you expect to earn 7% a year, it would take just over 10 years to double your money. But at a 3% annual return, the compounding process is much slower, with your money doubling every 24 years.
Obviously, the higher the return you earn,
31 Rules of the Road
Below is a modestly revised version of the Jonathan Clements Money Guide 2015‘s final chapter.
Looking to improve your money management? Here are 31 rules for the financial road ahead:
1. Check your retirement progress by taking your nest egg and applying a 4 percent annual portfolio withdrawal rate, equal to $4,000 a year for every $100,000 saved. Will you have enough retirement income—or should you be saving more?
MOST OF US STRUGGLE with self-control. We eat too much, exercise too little and spend excessively. One solution: Adopt rigid rules of behavior.
For instance, I make it a rule to exercise every morning for at least 40 minutes, always buy whole wheat bread, avoid caffeine after 9 a.m. and eat fruit as a midmorning snack. I’ve followed these rules for so long that they’re no longer rules, but rather ingrained, unquestioned habits.
Not surprisingly,
RETIREES ENDLESSLY debate how best to draw down their retirement savings, and yet it all comes down to two simple rules: Don’t spend too much each year, and don’t sell stocks during down markets.
How do we put these two rules into action? Retirees can pick from a host of withdrawal strategies, including the five popular choices listed below. You’d likely fare just fine with any of the five strategies—but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pick carefully.
STOCKS, BONDS, CASH—and a house owned free and clear. For many, that’s the recipe for a financially successful retirement. Our homes represent a central pillar of middle-class status. With a paid-off mortgage, we have an affordable place to spend our old age.
Yet signing up for decades of house payments has become controversial for its high opportunity cost—what you give up to pay the mortgage. Has a home mortgage, with its long, slow road to payoff,
I’VE SPENT MUCH OF MY life trying to better understand the world, especially the financial world. But I wonder whether I should have spent more of that time trying to better understand myself.
Why do some financial situations scare us, while others leave us unperturbed? Why do we spend time and money in ways we later regret? Why do we find our bad habits so difficult to change? Why do we admire some folks,
I’m wondering if there’s data on how much dividends for total market or S&P500 go up or down on average during bull vs bear market. As a retiree, I rely on my dividends and interest for my living expenses. It seems somewhat arbitrary to just hold 5-7 years of total living expenses (minus SS/pension) when in fact, dividends would like still happen even in a market downturn?