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Financial Planning

Retirement Uncertainties: Why Financial Planning is Necessary > Issue 4 > When Should Someone Start Taking Social Security?

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There is an abundance of online advice on this topic.  For every year beyond your full retirement age you delay taking social security benefits, those benefits go up 8%.  As a result, many Internet experts say that’s the way to go, as you can’t guarantee getting 8% increases on your investments in any given year so you might as well take advantage of a guaranteed 8% increase in your benefit.  Likewise, because you receive permanently reduced benefits by taking Social Security before your full retirement age, many Internet experts also caution about that strategy.  Well. . .  it’s just not…

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Retirement Uncertainties: Why Financial Planning is Necessary > Issue 3 > The Potential Pension Bomb

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Most American workers received pensions in past decades.  When pensions started becoming more scarce, it forced Americans who had no real knowledge of saving and investing to manage their own money they would need to secure their retirements.  By most accounts, this shift of responsibility has not worked out well for a large percentage of American workers.  There are many current retirees with corporate and government pensions paying for part of their retirement, and there are also still a few companies offering future pensions along with most state and federal departments.  That’s the good news.  However, not all is rosy…

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Retirement Uncertainties: Why Financial Planning is Necessary > Issue 2 > Healthcare Spending Is Increasing Faster Than the General Inflation Rate

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The changes to what we pay for the goods and services we buy do not increase by the same rate every year; some years they go up slowly, some years they jump up, and some years the cost of certain goods or services even goes down.  However, the longer-term trend is that the cost of the goods and services we purchase to live our lives is increasing.  For most items that historic increase is around 3% annually.  However, healthcare costs have been rising much faster over the past 40 years, with many estimates falling in the 6% to 8%+ per…

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Retirement Uncertainties: Why Financial Planning is Necessary > Issue 1 > Retirees’ expectations are based on a past that will probably not be the future

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The only certainty about the future is that it is uncertain.  When it comes to retirement planning, identifying the uncertainties and their potential financial impacts are our best shots at protecting ourselves from those things that could prevent us from reaching our retirement goals.  Researching the “top issues facing retirees” yields list after list of future uncertainties, everything from living too long, to the solvency of the Social Security system, to speculation around future asset prices.  While we reviewed many of the issues facing retirees today, we saw some we thought important enough to highlight, but we also noticed some…

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Losses Get No Respect

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When it comes to investing, everybody thinks about progress in terms of returns. This makes sense since without them financial goals are much harder to achieve, but very little time is spent thinking about losses and the role they play in achieving (or not achieving) those longer-term returns. Even when looking at most financial plans – whether simplistically crude or detailed – usually there’s some assumption for returns achieved based on a pre-determined risk tolerance. Aggressive investors usually assume higher returns while those with a more conservative predisposition will assume lower, safer returns. We’ll address the fatal flaw of assuming…

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Ask Cadence: If I choose to take social security early and my benefits get reduced, will they stay reduced forever?

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They could, but it depends on what you did to reduce the benefits.  Most people know by now that if you take social security before you reach your full retirement age, which these days for most people is 66 to 67 years old, you will receive reduced benefits.  If you take benefits at age 62 and your full retirement age is 66, your benefits will be permanently reduced by 25%.  Every month after age 62 that you wait to take benefits sees those benefits get closer and closer to 100% of your full social security retirement benefits.  People who take…

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