Greetings! I trust that this will find you well and enjoying life. Many of you became a client through the educational course on retirement planning I taught for the University of New Orleans or through one of the many workshops I’ve taught on a retirement related matter like social security… ...

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Greetings! I hope that this finds you well and in good spirits! There is an enormous amount of research that points to the fact that we all have a chance to live longer in retirement than we anticipated. I saw a statistic recently that reported that all known medical information… ...

Greetings! I trust that you’re well and enjoying life! The advantages of tax deferral are often emphasized when it comes to saving for retirement. So it might seem like a good idea to hold off on taking taxable distributions from retirement plans for as long as possible. (Note: Required minimum… ...

Greetings I trust that you’re well and enjoying life! As you grow older, housing issues become an integral part of your retirement plans. You may be living on a fixed income and want to get additional cash by borrowing against the equity in your home. You may feel isolated in… ...

Greetings. I trust that you’re well and enjoying life! Last week I wrote about proposed increases in Medicare premium rates for 2016 being made by the Trustees for Social Security and Medicare. Based on your income you may receive an increase and you may not (see last week’s article for… ...

Greetings! I trust that this finds you well and enjoying life. The weathers’ fantastic isn’t it. I want to encourage you to get outside and enjoy it. I want to touch on health care cost in retirement. Not a highly appealing topic but a highly necessary one to consider. I’ve… ...

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Greetings! I trust that this will find you well and enjoying life. As life expectancies increase, longevity risk–the risk of outliving retirement savings–is a concern for a growing number of people. In response, recent federal regulations created qualified longevity annuity contracts (QLACs), which are accessible through employer-sponsored plans, such as… ...

Greetings! I trust that this finds you well and enjoying life. Last week I wrote about stock dividends as an option for retirement income. This week let’s talk about the affect dividends have on market returns. Take the S&P index for example. How important are dividends in the S&P 500’s… ...

Greetings! I trust that this will find you well and enjoying life. A client recently asked about stock dividends as a source of retirement income. So the question is, are stock dividends reliable as a source of income? Dividends can be an important source of income. However, there are several… ...

Greetings! I trust that this will find you well and enjoying life. So much turbulence these past weeks in the market. Greater than anything since 2011. Unless a person has a solid understanding of the nature of the markets and the economic forces that drive them, emotional decisions can be… ...

Greetings! I trust that this finds you well and enjoying life. After a tumultuous volatile week technically a week that involved the greatest market point fluctuations (not percentage fluctuation) ever, where will it go from here? Officially we experienced a cyclical (short term) not secular (long term) market correction. A… ...

Greetings! I trust that this will find you well and enjoying life. The market volatility that I spoke about in my last writing began to manifest itself early last week and intensified as the week progressed. As of today the draw down has reached an official technical “correction” which denotes… ...

Greetings! I hope this finds you well and enjoying life. Here we are at a high point in the cycle of economic uncertainty. I say in the cycle because economic uncertainty is cyclical like stocks are cyclical, bond prices are cyclical, real estate is cyclical and pretty much any asset… ...

Greetings! I trust that this will find you well and in good spirits. I can’t emphasize strongly enough the importance of you keeping up with current financial affairs to a certain degree. Over time by staying in tune with the ebb and flow of the economy and the markets, you… ...

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Greetings! I trust that this finds you well and in good spirits. I want to pose a question. What does your retirement income plan look like? Do you have one? Accumulating a reasonable level of assets for retirement and strategy involved in that is certainly a necessary endeavor. However structuring… ...

Greetings! I trust that this finds you well and enjoying life. Whether you’re already retired or knocking on the door, one way to potentially maximize your savings, investments and income is to minimize your tax liability. Tax-deferred vehicles are more tax efficient since money can grow without the annual burden… ...

Greetings! I trust that this finds you well and enjoying life. A common strategy to save for retirement is to allocate funds for a tax-deferred retirement account, such as traditional IRA, employer-sponsored 401 (k) or 403 (b) plan. However, one drawback to saving via these plans is that when you… ...